DxOMark: EOS 5DS/R sensor is highest-ranked Canon sensor yet

DxOMark just published its report on the 50MP sensor in Canon's EOS 5DS and 5DSR. The company's measurements indicate that the 50MP full-frame CMOS is the best-performing Canon sensor to date, offering massive resolution, roughly a 1/3EV improvement in dynamic range over Canon's previous best-performer in this regard, the EOS 6D, with low light performance only a bit behind Canon's low light king, the EOS-1D X. You can compare the 5DS to the 6D and 1D X, Canon's most recent full-frame cameras, here.

The new cameras don't break any records though - according to DxOMark's tests, the EOS 5DSR and 5DS sit in 21st and 22nd place in the company's overall rankings. This is well behind cameras with current-generation Sony CMOS sensors. DxO's results mirror essentially what we found when we put the 5DS R through our Raw dynamic range tests, and you can read our findings here.

The kind folks at DxO have shared their sensor measurement data with us, so we'd like to take this opportunity to comment a bit further on the performance of the 5DS cameras, especially in relation to their nearest competitor, the Nikon D810. But first, a link to DxO's report:

Dynamic Range

We took the liberty of normalizing 5DS R dynamic range data from DxO to 36MP for a fair comparison against the Nikon D810. This process of normalization effectively ensures we're comparing cameras at a common viewing size, as if you were comparing prints of the same size. This helps cameras with higher pixel counts, which would otherwise be unfairly hurt by their noisier pixels. Since we view pictures, and not pixels, it makes sense to consider noise at the image level, not at the pixel level. By normalizing the 50MP of the 5DS R to 36MP, we're essentially comparing the 5DS R and the D810 on the same, level playing field.

DxO does something similar in their 'Print' mode display of their data; however, that assumes a very low output resolution of only 8MP, which is probably below the resolution most users of these high resolution cameras will desire. Here, we compare at the highest, common denominator: 36MP. Have a look below to see the Raw dynamic range of the cameras, stated in EV, as a function of ISO.

Raw dynamic range of Canon 5DS R vs. Nikon D810, as a function of ISO. 5DS R dynamic range has been normalized to an output of 36MP, for fair comparison against the Nikon D810. At base ISO, the 5DS R has 11.2 EV of dynamic range, while the D810 has 13.7 EV. That's a 2.5 EV advantage of the D810 at base ISO. By ISO 800, differences are minimal. Raw data courtesy of DxO

At base ISO, which is 100 for the 5DS R and 64 for the D810, the difference in 'engineering' dynamic range* is a rather hefty 2.5 EV, with the D810 and 5DS R exhibiting 13.7 and 11.2 EV dynamic range, respectively. That means that, down at the darkest levels of exposure on the sensor, tones that receive nearly 6x less light on the D810 will yield similar noise levels to those that received 6x more light on the 5DS R. This explains why you can push and reveal much deeper shadows with D810 Raw files than you can with the Canon files. This ability allows one to expose high contrast scenes for the highlights, which yields a traditional underexposure of midtones and shadows. Due to the low noise of these darker tones recorded on a D810 sensor, one can then push them to make them visible again in a manner one cannot do as effectively on a 5DS R.

Differences in dynamic range between these cameras continue to hold, albeit decrease, all the way up to ISO 800, at which point any differences become minimal at best.

The advantage of ISO 64

There are two things that enable the much higher dynamic range of the D810: first of all, low read noise due to on-chip ADC architecture means your camera's electronics don't have such a high noise floor that dark tones run into them. Second, Nikon implemented ISO 64 on the D810 by actually extending the saturation capacity of pixels (we're not sure how) relative to ISO 100 on previous D800/E cameras. This means that every pixel can capture more light before saturating and clipping. Now if we give the sensors more exposure to take advantage of the increased well-capacities, then darker portions of the scene get cleaner, due to less shot noise and lower risk of running into the, albeit low, noise floor. These are the features that lead to wide dynamic range on the D810, none of which are found in the 5DS cameras.

Signal:Noise Ratio

Having compared the 5DS R vs its nearest competitor, the Nikon D810, with respect to dynamic range, we thought it'd be interesting to see if any of the tones - bright to dark, white to black - of the 5DS R can compete with the best the D810 can do. We can do this by plotting the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of every tone the sensor of each camera can record, from raw data provided to us by DxO. All you need to know about SNR is this: the higher it is, the 'cleaner' and less noisy the tone is.

Looking at the SNR plots below, it's clear that the D810 has a higher SNR for virtually every tone the sensor can record compared to the 5DS R. This is due to the technologies we've already discussed that give it high base ISO dynamic range: a higher full-well capacity of pixels means the camera can actually capture more light, while the lower read noise means that at darker tones (on the left end of this graph) suffer less from noise due to the camera's sensor and electronics. In fact, it's the higher read noise of the 5DS R that causes the continuous drop in SNR relative to the D810 for all lower tones (left side of the graph).

Base ISO signal:noise ratio (SNR) in dB for all tones the 5DS R (blue) and D810 (red) can record. Higher SNR is better. For all tones, the D810 benefits from a higher full-well capacity of pixels, which means the sensor in its entirety can record more light, which reduces shot noise. The lower (downstream) read noise of the D810 also ensures that darker tones have far higher SNR, and therefore less noise, than the 5DS R. This is why the red line pulls further and further away (tones get cleaner and cleaner) from the blue line for darker tones. Raw data courtesy of DxO

An interesting aside: the high SNR of tones the D810 records, by capturing more light and contributing less read noise, actually makes it a competitor for modern medium format sensors - from Sony itself - found in Phase One backs, and the Pentax 645Z. It's why some of the ISO 64 shots on the D810 just look so sharp and clean and, dare we say, almost have that 'medium format look'. With the D810, Nikon improved on an already class-leading sensor with the introduction of a native ISO 64. But we digress, and will save a SNR comparison between the D810 and 645Z for a separate article.

What's this all mean in the real world? You may remember the tulip sunrise shot from our 5DS R dynamic range analysis. We've included it on the next page of this article. Some of the shadows, including the greens of the tulip stems, in that shot have a Raw signal that translates to a grey level of approximately 0.26 in the graphs above (on an 8-bit, 255 scale). For the 5DS R, that yields a SNR of 6 dB, while the same signal yields a SNR of 18 dB for the D810, which is actually a 16-fold higher SNR (every 3 dB increase is a doubling in absolute SNR). That is impressive, and accounts for the real-world difference photographers see in noisiness of shadows between these cameras.

* Engineering dynamic range (EDR) reports the range of tones between clipping and a the lowest tone, on the dark end, that still has an 'acceptable' noise threshold of SNR = 1. Oftentimes this leads to a higher range than is actually usable, as most photographers will not consider tones with SNR = 1 as 'acceptable'. EDR is still useful as a point of comparison between cameras, though quoting absolute EDR numbers may have questionable relevancy. We've been investigating the idea of using a higher SNR threshold on the low end and, indeed, the 'Photographic Dynamic Range' popularized by Bill Claff uses a higher SNR threshold to yield some very useful comparisons and absolute dynamic range numbers, which Bill calculates himself independently on his excellent site.

Comments

We are discussing, determinedly a lot about dynamic range and boosting exposure - noise, but kindly go through the Nikon 810a “a DR champ for DR boosters”, review of Adam Woodworth in the fallowing linkhttps://luminous-landscape.com/nikon-d810a-review-landscape-astrophotography/Adam Woodworth wrote, "...I chose to use ISO 12800 for my primary tests because it is the highest native ISO of all 3 cameras. And since, in my experience, a 25 second ISO 12800 exposure will be cleaner than a dark 25 second ISO 3200 exposure, I have been using ISO 12800 for most of my sky shots while testing the D810A.…”

I rest my case.here is a perfect example of lanscape shooting (scenery with stars; albeit only sky details, and insufficient light for the rest of the landscape (no moon light)) ... shooting well above ISO 800+.

even ISO 3200 'dark' frame trick will not suffice, never mind ISO 100.

what I am seeking, only a low light dSLR may properly handle (upcoming EOS 5DMkIV/4?)

whilst some starry sky shooters shoot only for the stars (on a dark sky)there are those of us preferring the more difficult 'starry blue skies' with minimal star trails (ideally, under 4 seconds, not 15-30 plus seconds) ... how else will people venture to explore more NIGHT PORTRAITURE under NATURAL LIGHT (like moonlight) instead of relying on artificial light (like flash)!!!???

early sunrise (sun is visibly risen or just below horizon) or late sunset (sun is visibly just dropped below horizon) light conditions are still bright but harsh shadows are gone, skies are still essentially daylight (easy to see even indoors without lights): this is NOT low light, nor even close to poor light.Most daytime landscape shooters in such GOOD light will shoot at much lower/low ISOs 800 and below.You are mis-generalizing landscape shooters as shooting exclusively from sun-dawn-to-dusk-hours (day hours), and completely ignoring landscape shooters who regularly venture into sun-dusk-to-dawn-hours (night hours).By the time one learns to explore truly LOW light shooting, one deals with only minimal light (moon, stars, galaxy, auroras), no city lights, flash only used for filling in backlit subjects (under moonlight; much like in backlit daytime shots).If you shoot at low ISO 100 under only moonlight, can YOU achieve blue skies filled with STARS (no star trails 15-30s)?

once one venture into low light where only window light (daytime or city lights illuminate indoors with NO inside light) or worse (just moonlight), to minimize blur from motion, minimum ISO 800+ is needed.but at ISO 800+ DR of most if not all sensors differ little, varying only DR 8-9 EV.what is needed is improved tech for cooler image sensors generating less noise in very low light conditions at higher ISO sensitivitiesand better sensor data read processing without adding heat to the sensors themselves.

Let's leave out all the red herrings and distractions and cut right to the chase: aside from star/astrophotography, most landscape shooters shoot at base ISO, b/c they can give their camera as much exposure as it needs.

For star shots, sure, high ISO matters.

But even then, if you read in the astrophotography forums, base ISO matters, b/c often these photographers will keep ISO amplification down in-camera and do the boosting later, so as to not blow out stars.

In which case, you actually need a camera with high base ISO dynamic range, so that saving brightening for post-processing doesn't come at a noise cost, as it does for cameras with low base ISO dynamic range.

These cameras give you stops of highlight headroom by allowing you to save amplification for later.

Therefore, situations that conventionally demand higher ISOs are still served better by cameras with high base ISO DR, that also have good high ISO noise performance (SNR 18%).

@Rishi Zooming the tulips photo 100% shows some noise or rather some grain, also in the light parts (sky) of the image. Looks like the RAW conversion applied the grain (ACR, LR, ...)? Same with the CA, you can see at the mountains skyline. Looks like there was no lens and nor camera profile available? Well, the tulips subtitel says "pre-production 5DS". So no camera profile, right? After all, I'm not sure whether this image is representative for a "Canon 5DS shot"?

The noise is due to the lower dynamic range of the camera, which limits the quality of pushed (raised) tones that were initially underexposed to save the sky from blowing out. It has very little to do with the Raw converter.

@Rishi Sanyal may I ask how you manage to get the 6EV on RAW files? I have Lightroom and the maximum value is 5 EV. I am under the impression you use ACR so I am puzzled where that 6EV come from. Where does that extra stop come from? Thank you.

A combination of lowering the Whites and Highlights sliders, with +5 EV Exposure, and then boosting of Blacks sliders, and finally an adjustment of the white point on the Tone Curve tool - which linearly scales data. We don't use the Shadows slider typically as it can artificially make the image look even noisier, by holding some blacks down while raising other dark tones in a context sensitive manner.

Stressing the pure sensor score is like comparing cars just based on their engines output.The complete system matters as well as the intended purpose.For many professionals 50 MP for printing outweigh less dynamic range.Advanced mirror control helps to reduce camera shake and make a 50 MP camera usable hand held which may outweigh less dynamic range, too.Others need the best dynamic range available and will have to accept trade-offs elsewhere (lossy raws for example or the need for a tripod to avoid shake).So some will go for Canon, other for Niko, Sony etc.What's the problem?

BTW, waiting for another article about lossy raws, just to emphasize this lack of A7ii >:)

So Rishi:did you do a comparison when a shot like your nice tulip photo is bracketed (as any pro ((me)) would do), and then compare the results? I am wondering whether the differences in shadow noise, etc, would be different? I seem to have NO problems with DNR on my Canon 5D MK III, yet the way you talk, the Canon Dslrs are almost crippled compared to the Sony sensor cameras. I always bracket and exposure blend any high ev range scene (when possible) as do almost all of my pro friends. I would do the same with ANY DSLR camera, Sony sensor or not. If you have a payday riding on a shot, you wouldn't take a chance on screwing it up . It should be an interesting comparison in either case, as no one I know would just take a 13-14 ev shot and hope for the best, no matter what the camera.

Interesting! I'm glad I have the Nikon D800 and did not spend a ton of money upgrading to the Canon 50 MP models. (The D800 was not in the comparison test and may not be as impressive as the D810, but still...)

BUT what I really want to say is: WOW, Rishi Sanyal, that tulip photo above is spectacular.

All this tsuris illustrates a key failing in understanding of test results...Are you guys unaware of the fact that some camera makers work very hard to game the reviewing system. They tailor their cameras so that they look good when tested by sites like DXO; the tradeoff is that they may not work as well in the field. Other camera makers bias their systems so they work well in the field at the expense of lesser performance in lab tests.

It seems that Canon has engineered this camera with real-world performance in mind and is bravely willing to take its chances with the internet.... Bravo to them!

Well how much difference does the gap above make to a shot. Can you see it. Well seeing as your monitor has at most 8 bits of dynamic range and you're lucky to print 6 bits I'd say no. Does it help if the camera got the exposure wrong, of course. Is DxO measuring it properly, most likely. So please point it out in the review. This is the third such article on Canon's deficiency though and seeing as you have to be playing with sliders to make it show up in normal photos (you can't see it in the test scene for instance) I'm starting to think DPR is starting to look a little bias. Nikon for instance has no electronic first curtain in many of its cameras. Sony is lacking in the lens department. Fuji smears detail but there's no articles dedicated to showing off those bad traits. Even when the was the light problem with the 750 DP was very quick to show Canon was just as bad. I don't even own a Canon (my wife does) but if I'm starting to see bias I can only imagine how Canon owners feel.

ZDMan, DPR is just one of many sites that review cameras....I take what I read here with a hefty pinch of salt, like I do elsewhere...short reviews by actual pro photographers are more valid from my pov because they use these tools everyday and have to repeat top quality results day after day, rain wind or shine, with critical clients hanging over their shoulders... ..but having said that I still read the reviews to form a general idea, and compare it to what other have said and appreciate the effort put into it but just remember the reviewers here and elsewhere are professional reviewers first and amateur photographers(mostly) second, ......but read the short review of Marin Bailey on the 5DsR...for me it was quite insightful at how a wildlife pro looks at things as opposed to most amateurs here...we live in different worlds it would seem sometimes....but all is good here and one shouldn't take anything said here, or anywhere on the web, including mine, too seriously!

"Are you guys unaware of the fact that some camera makers work very hard to game the reviewing system. They tailor their cameras so that they look good when tested by sites like DXO"

Yes, in fact, we are unaware of this supposed 'fact'. Would you care to enlighten us as to the evidence that supports these accusations you purport as fact? Please be specific.

Also, even if a camera were tailored to score well in tests that were designed to test things that correlate with photographic image quality, please explain to us how that is a bad thing, or is irrelevant, or is somehow counter to 'real-world performance'.

"It seems that Canon has engineered this camera with real-world performance in mind"

Are you implying others don't engineer cameras with real-world performance in mind? If so, please explain how cameras apparently don't perform in the 'real-world' relative to Canon cameras.

No I've no problem with you pointing it out. Its just the third article to do so. There was the Dynamic Range test for the 5DSR which showed the same thing and the invariance article. Hey I love the in depth articles and love the technical nature of them but we're flogging a dead horse here. I'm not saying the articles show bias as they don't (very well thought out). I'm saying the fact that we keep going back to it. Possibly its editorial bias. No articles on the Nikons 750 lack of an electronic first curtain or one showing how much Fuji blurs detail and those would both be very visible with no need to push any sliders.

Oh and in that one flare article you picked a 3 year old canon to show it also had a problem and you didn't just compare it you made it the main photo of the article (the first one). You also showed another two Nikon which didn't have the issue to balance it out (showing the 6D and MkIII would have made canon look better too). Again I'm not saying you are biased but it could easily be interpreted as such. The imaging resource one is much more balanced.

And this is the 3rd or 4th story we've published on defects with the Nikon D750, oh and there was that story about the 300mm F4 lens having VR issues which we confirmed existed with even other lenses of the Nikon system paired with a D810... must mean we're biased against Nikon, right?

Right?

I mean, that would be the logical conclusion if we were to take your train of thought.

These accusations of bias are the oldest, most overplayed, at this point downright boring and comical tricks in the book. And the conspiracy theorists often fall back to 'but hey, I'm just the one asking the questions'. Uh huh.

Trust me, we've put the D750 and D810 and Sony and Canon cameras through days and days of laborious shutter shock testing, which we'll be publishing soon. Ever consider that it's just a small team w/ limited resources rather than jump to 'bias!'. Why would we not want to talk about shutter shock/lack of EFC where it's an issue?

Sorry Rishi was having a bad day and took the comments personally. Looking forward to more in-depth technical articles in future. Since you've joined the team I feel the site has improved leaps and bounds.

Excuse me, gents ... I recommend trying the 5DSR. It is manufactured for the Canon system, as a part of the system. The evaluation of the sensor alone it is relevant but I think that all the characteristics should be considered together.

I am a photographer (not an engineer). I owe the Sony a7r and the Canon 5DSR and the outputs are different. The 5DSR sensor works exceptionally well with the last lenses (100 - 400, 16 - 35, 24 - 70, ...). Files are very manageable. Native colors have been improved from the 5DIII. I am very happy with it.

I guess we should avoid to compare Ferrari and Lamborghini only because one model is a little bit faster or less noisy, ... or focusing only on a part the engine.

I second the "system" observation. I stopped using Adobe Raw because their math makes CR2 files look relatively flat and "posterized" compared to DPP. DPP brings out a three-dimentionallity that I CANNOT get with ACR. The difference is breath-taking - no kidding.

And this Tulips photo is beautiful, for sure, but its a rescue from the dust-bin - too dark, too contrasty... Micro-analize an image where all conditions are optimized for technical quality.

i´d love a lower shadow noise floor /better DR when i accidently miss-meter the shot (recently had a bride standing in front of a window, it was a snapshot during the wedding cermony, she looked beautiul and i just shot it without adjusting anything - she turned out way too dark and i couldn´t lift it enough in LR without breaking apart the image) or whant to work without additional fill-light when taking backlit images.

but thats not an everyday problem, having the D750 sensor in my 5D3 would be welcome, but its nothing that would drive me over to switching systems or holding me back taking great images and making money. in fact, any DSLR theese days is "good enough" for most of the work you could throw at it, and the rest..well...it would be a nice to have, but often it ends in pixel peeping.

Alternatively , I wonder if Sebastiao Salgado realises his award winning work is shot on a sensor that is not quite state of the art. Maybe if he know he would rush back to all those recent locations and take much better images. :-)I wonder if he cares?

Canon need to improve from a Pixel peeping point of view, or do they? Of course improvement is welcomed but needs perspective.I know many working photographers who have no idea what is being discussed in here, who are oblivious to any of this PP. It doesn't seem to be quite as big an issue to them and or they are more than happy with their gear, lenses , performance etc offered by their systems. And I suppose more importantly so are their Clients.

I wonder if clients will start demanding a Nikon or Sony shooter because of their much better images?????…I think not. :-)

Great photographers can and do use any system and get great results. However, when I'm spending a huge amount of my disposable cash on a camera, I want to know everything about its pros and cons. I'm particularly interested in the cons. Not because I want to bash a brand but because I know most £3k cameras are pretty excellent in most ways. The downsides are the easy way to differentiate.

If I'm spending this money, I want the best camera for me, for that money. If high DR is something I appreciate, maybe this camera isn't the best use of my £3k. Maybe I'll just buy something cheaper, or maybe I'll go Sony/Nikon. Maybe pixel count is my main concern and I'll use these results to determine that the DR on this camera is enough to meet my needs and I'll buy it. The point is, I want the review sites to test these things mercilessly. Then I'll know if, for my needs, they're worth the money.

And I totally agree…. But some of the rhetoric below would make you think the Canon is incapable of taking a decent image. Just Saying. I recently sold my Canon and have owned many Nikons including D800E, both systems took great shots, but the Magic Lantern hack on the 5DMKIII for me, put it above filling my hard drive with Huge Nikon HQ still files. So, Yes, we can use this information to weigh everything up towards a decision.

Salgado as far as I know uses DXO film pack TRI-X filter...which as anyone from the days of film and that has used the filter knows increases the contrast and 'graininess noise' considerably...which just shows that there are many photographers that doesn't need/want the wide DR/HDR capabilities of modern digital cameras...the TRi-X filters gives him the closest match to the TRI-X film look...of course I am not saying more DR is not desirable, ( The new M3 imo desperately needs better quality shadow recovery) any and all improvements in image quality are welcome, but for some of us DR is just not the 'holy grail' its made out to be here and elsewhere...I almost always increase the contrast in post with Viveza because for me a more contrasty image just looks better than a HDR looking one...in any case go and look at Martin Baileys review and images made with his 5DSR to see what this camera is capable of...but isn't it nice that we can all buy the camera we like and want today?

The question is easy...regardless of what he uses. Does the sensor in the Nikon provide for a larger tonal range...yes or no. We know the answer is yes...and this provides for higher quality. What your idols use, is irrelevant.

I'm confused ( probably because I'm a Canon user ) but how do you define image quality? and btw Salgado is not my Idol, I would identify more with William Klein, Stephen Shore, David Goldblatt, Mark Klett, Nadav Kander, et al.....and I have no idea what tools they use.....and never ever thought of judging the ' quality' of their images on the DR thereof....I was sort of thinking the quality of their images would be determined by the emotion it invokes in me....but obviously I have got it wrong all these years, please enlighten me!

Yep.. same thing with Ansel Adams. He was using what was good at the time he was around. And he had great results.Does that mean that all of us should use medium and large format film cameras and ignore new and better technology?

No, we should use the technology we want to use, and that gives us the results we desire and that fits in best with our own personal workflow, budget, likes and dislikes, lens choice etc etc...so the choice now is as easy as pie, if a wide DR look is paramount then one can choose to use Sony sensor equipped cameras, and if a wide DR look is not what one is after, or its not important to the photographer then one can choose something else, if the Sony sensor equipped brands are not to ones liking ...but if the best DR is all that matters in judging image quality well then shouldn't we use only the best, why stop at the Sony 35mm sensors, why then not use Phase 1, Hasselblad or Pentax? Or for that matter Imacon scanned 8x10 inch negs? and btw AA also used 35mm cameras....

Exactly. Many pro photographers push & pull exposures considerably in post-processing, b/c if a shot works from a composition, moment, focus, etc. perspective, they will want to keep the shot, even if the exposure was wrong b/c it was challenging scene & in the moment they weren't able to bias the metering system to nail it, or it was just a challenging light scene that required an underexposure to preserve bright regions.

And when they do this sort of adjustment, latitude can be incredibly valuable.

I see shots from some of my favorite award-winning photographers that are more noisy than what I'd expect from a full-frame camera, & after reading some of their post-processing workflow blog posts - that indicate they do drastic cropping & exposure adjustments - the noisy results are suddenly not very surprising, especially when I learn they also use a camera body with comparatively low dynamic range and resolution.

Does that mean they should definitely buy a camera with higher resolution and/or dynamic range? No.

But the point of tests/articles like this is to hopefully raise awareness that there are tools that are better (and worse) in X or Y regard, so that the photographer can make a better decision about what equipment might serve their needs better, or worse.

If you don't see the value of that, then maybe your photography itself is just pushing the limits of your equipment. Which is perfectly fine, but realize that there are others who find their equipment limiting in different ways (especially pros), and sure they might work around such issues (or ignore them entirely, being fine with noisy, slightly mis-focused photos), but that doesn't mean that cameras that solve these issues might not serve them better.

There are even reports from pros in our own articles that say the extended latitude helps their work... but somehow these reports are conveniently ignored in OPs like this one.

Let's put this plainly. There isn't a print process in the world that can reproduce more than 7 stops of DR. The vast majority of electronic displays reproduce about the same amount. (The coming hdr displays will change this, true). Whether you are dealing with 10, 12, 15, or 19 stops of captured DR, any excess will need to be compressed into a smaller range or simply thrown away. The more you compress thru the mid-tones the worse it looks...and so the more DR you have to compress...well let's just say it's not adding anything to final image quality. Both canon and Nikon produce profiles that display 7-8 stops of dr withe the remaining range buried in compressed highlights and shadows. This provides a generally optimal look in most situations, as it matches the output capabilities of the vast majority of devices. Just because you can pull more of that range into the middle on a Nikon/Sony.. does not make the final image look more realistic.

Sorry. It doesn't matter unless you want the "freedom" to over or under-expose at will. You've probably never seen a "flat" raw out of a camera (and most likely wouldn't know what to do with one if you did.) There's a reason why Canon/Nikon/Everybody applies a pretty strong curve to even their flattest of profiles, bringing the raw file close to the range that all but the most esoteric output devices can produce. If they didn't you wouldn't be able to pull any additional detail out of those highlights and shadows. DPR's tulip example shows a sky that has clearly been pulled too far to the middle because he's "exposed for the sun"...it looks like HDR and adding two more stops of range isn't going to improve things. How bout we leave it at this - you want two more stops of DR...fine...have fun...but lets stop with the malarky that a camera with only 12.7 stops is somehow garbage. 12.7 stops is far more than needed for print/screen until we start seeing HDR displays (currently $20-30k )

Barry, the value of greater dynamic range IS the ability to tonemap. There is a common theme among individuals such as yourself that believe once you have lifted the shadows, processing of a high dynamic range image from a camera like the D810 is "done". That could not be farther from the truth. Lifting the shadows is only step one. The image still needs to be processed to taste, and contrast can be restored to the post-lift scene to have crisp, clear, clean detail.

In this article, I simply explored just the shadow pushing abilities of the A7r and 5D III. I took my "extreme" lift images, however, and further processed them to bring out as much detail as possible:

Processing does not stop with a shadow push!! It STARTS with a shadow push...and you process to taste and style from there. My example isn't some world-class interior design photo...it's just my living room. However it should effectively demonstrate the point...more dynamic range allows tonemapping...the same thing that HDR processing allows. The whole point of tonemapping is to redistribute the tones so they fit your publication target...say a 7-stop print...then you process to taste.

Another important point. The D810 doesn't have 14.8 stops of DR, and neither does the 5Ds have 12.5 stops of DR. Those are the MATHEMATICALLY EXTRAPOLATED dynamic range values of normalized data, at 8mp. DXO does not actually measure Print DR. It runs a mathematical formula on the Screen DR (direct measurements from RAW images at native size). At native size, the 5D III has 10.97 stops of Per-Pixel DR. At native size, the 5Ds has 11.08 stops of Per-Pixel DR.

Now, I don't know about anyone else...but THAT is a pitiful improvement...and it is truly sad. Truly SAD. I've waited for so many years for Canon to produce a modern, competitive landscape camera. I have no hopes of that anymore. Look at the Tulip photo in this article. Not one pixel of that image is "acceptable"...not by modern standards. A camera with 11 stops of DR is not bad...but when I can get, for less money, a D810 which would TROUNCE the 5Ds...that is truly unacceptable.

Canon has seriously lost their competitive edge when it comes down to fundamental IQ. I hear a lot of arguments about it's the camera and all it's features that matter. Sure. The camera matters. AF systems matter. Meters matter. Frame rate matters. Canon excels at every one of those. Canon could even be superior in every case, but at the very least, they are competitive...against modern competitors products. If you are a skilled photographer, you should have no problem nailing AF and metering, and...

The 5D line of DSLRs is a line of DSLRs for skilled, capable photographers. Same goes for the 1D line, and the 6D line, and the 7D line. These are pro-grade cameras. So why is it that, given the excellent quality of every other aspect of Canon cameras, photographers buying pro-grade Canon cameras cannot come to grips with the FACT that Canon sensors are NOT modern. That Canon sensors are NOT competitive. That Canon sensors do NOT deliver top-shelf image quality?

Canon's sensors are the SOLE thing they have left that they really NEED to improve, in order to bring their cameras and their image quality into the modern age. No, 11 stops of DR isn't "bad"...but concurrently, neither is it as good as what you can get, for less money, from the competition. Why should I spend more for Canon for something inferior?

@Barry it might not matter to you, but to anyone that would consider post-processing (such as film development and printing were) creative processes as much part of the photographic process as the picture taking process itself, then DR does matter and has a considerable impact in creative freedom you have when manipulating the files. Someone shooting JPEGs only, or printing a straight RAW conversion will probably miss this entirely.

Sorry Jon. But your article really only proves the obvious...that the Sony has MORE dynamic range than the 5D3. Thanks for that. I'm trying to imagine any photographer in his right mind exposing for some unimportant detail out a window, when what he wants us to see is some detail in the deep shadows of the foreground. You may feel like its a fair test, and it is if you're simply comparing range...but to me, everything about this approach to exposure is simply wrong. I realize it's just a test and that if you were shooting with your 5d3 in this situation in real life you would have increased your exposure by a couple of stops and still probably got back that useless info out the window, and well that's the the problem with tests...they throw logic out the window in favor of facts. And maybe it's because "individuals such as myself" live where photographic technique and composition take precedence over poor exposure and post-processing that I don't see the genius in your article.

And By the way...it really is fantastic that the Sony can pull all that detail out of the shadows. Awesome in fact. (and really, no snark--thanks for showing me that:-) It really is hard to imagine how decades of film photographers and I guess, decades of digital photographers, got by without it.

@autochrome -- I had to chuckle at your comment directed at me. There's somehow this assumption going on that I don't like post processing, or somehow think that its not a creative process. Maybe you should google me.

And Oysso. when you compress 11 stops into 7 you get a flat image. When you compress 15 stops into 7 you get a flatter image. Jon's article proves it. Ansel Adams spent decades compressing 10-11 stops into 7. I think he got it about right. Cartier-Bresson the same. Joel Meyerowitz, ditto. Andy Warhol compressed it down to 2 stops. Sold well. Saw James Nachtwey get his hair parted by a bullet once. I'll bet he wasn't exposing for the sun.

And Jon, one more comment before I head off to breakfast. I come from the world of digital Hasselblad, been shooting on medium format sensors since I stopped shooting film 15 years ago. I work in a somewhat rare world of needing my work enlarged daily to 60-80-100" in length. The 5dsr is the first 35mm camera that competes in my world. In my world it's a bargain. It has more detail than my H5d. It has nice skin tones. It renders fabrics beautifully. There are other things in life just as important as read noise and dynamic range.

@Barry Goyette i'm sorry to disappoint you but i never hard about you before. If you don't feel constrained by the limitations of Canon sensors or if they don't affect you minimally, then wonderful. Other people might run into this limitation sooner rather than later. I'm pretty sure if Ansel Adams were to be constrained by Andy Warhol's 2 stops as you put it, he would perhaps find it restrictive. Yes we lived with Velvia and Kodachrome DR, but we also lived with TLRs and parallax error and with 400ISO being the limit of what was acceptable, color shifting and reciprocity failure. Times moved on, thankfully.

@autochrome. Not expecting you to know me...also not expecting assumptions as to anything about my work if you don't. :-) Regardless, my point from the beginning has been that this singular focus on DR (and proving it by exposing so far to the left that it's ridiculous) is a little pointless. Of course all improvements in sensors are welcome...photography is a technical medium. (And despite Jon's protestations, Doubling the resolution of a sensor while eeking out a small gain in dr IS an innovation). But to suggest (not you....but certainly many others) that a camera is garbage because it doesn't meet one spec (that I happen to think is a tad overhyped) is just the kind of BS that goes on in too many of these forums. There are lots of things to love about the 5dsr, just as there are lots of things to love about the A7r and the 810e. Let's start sharing the love. Ya?

As you already contradicted yourself by mentioning tone mapping with Ansel et al, you proved yourself wrong without any I effort from me. You need more range than the output media. EVery printer knows that...except you apparently. And if your results are flat...then you've been doing it wrong for 30 years.

John Rista, everything you say makes sense and I mostly agree with it, I even totally agree that the Canon sensors DR is less than the Sony sensors, but why are you so hung up that we still keep on using Canon's? Surely what tools we use is a personal choice and if we are ' wrong or foolish or whatever, if we are wasting our money, what's it to you? I and many here are not defending the sensors, what we are defending is what we consider to be good enough. If my Canon consistently let me down because of the 'lack of DR' I would dump it in a mili second, but I don't because contrary to 'conventional wisdom here' we are happy with what we get. Why is that such a problem for many here? personally the tulip image looks flat and too HDR for me, but hey each to his own, at the end of the day what matters to me is the final print and when printing large resolution matters more to me than the DR, but that's just me and I wouldn't presume to tell you how you should like and prefer your images...

Barry Goyette, I googled you! Absolutely stunning images, congratulations! I think your images are proof that some of us are getting too hung up on the technical stuff, all that matters is the final image, and how we got there, the long way or the short way is really irrelevant....it's our personal choice after all, like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

@Barry GoyetteFunny thing you are trying to say here. I actually use flat raw files from camera because i KNOW how to use them and what to make of them. If you can't, that is your issue... I use my own tone curves and tone map images to my liknig. And yes 2 stops of DR matters a LOT to me. If they dont matter to you, fine, i won't argue about your techniques. But as long i can crop my images enough to my liking and have some Extra DR to work with, I'm happy.Saying that you dont need more DR is just like saying "hey, most of screens are 1920x1980, why the hell would i need more than 2MP" :SIt gives you lattitude to make small errors. And if you know how to use those extra 2 DR stops you can make stunning results.

I wonder how we can move on from this stuck in a groove situation? When we say good enough is good enough for ourselves, its just plain not good enough for some...so should we then agree that some of us should know better but prefer to live in an outdated, stuck in the past mentality? We don't know how to use & process RAW's, we cant recognize a deficiency in DR if it bit us in the face, we have total misplaced loyalty to our brand and really we are just plain stupid for wanting all those extra pixels when less is actually better, and ........(fill in anything else I left out) Ok so here goes, we apologize for that, but we cant promise that we will mend our ways, so please forgive us, and please please please can we MOVE ON NOW?

A good photographer can make some very nice photos with crappy equipment. Just look at some images taken with a phone https://www.flickr.com/cameras/apple/iphone_6/https://www.flickr.com/cameras/apple/iphone_6_plus/That doesn't prove that some other people can't push limits of far Superior sensors.For example - when i had a low DR sensor camera, I've constantly had banding issues when processing images. And now that i have a high DR one thos issues are a thing of the past.Some people use forms and objects as a main part of their composition - and for them the low DR cameras can work just fine. But for others, that use colour as a main part of the composition - every single stop of DR is a welcome addition.

As I exit this discussion, I'll revisit my initial comment (located several pages back in this topic. My concern with DPReview spending an entire article parsing and confirming DxO's DR scores is that the author failed to establish an appropriate level of context around those scores. The question I asked at that time was this "Does an image made with 14 stops of DR look better than one taken with 12 stops (feel free to extrapolate downward based on Jon's more strict approach). Of course, "better" is something entirely subjective, but I think my point was clear enough, given that our output options hover around 7 stops of range we are faced (and have been since the beginning of image making) with compressing both DR or nature and that of our 'captures" of it into a much smaller range at final output, whether that be tangible or electronic. One can choose from a variety of approaches -- either favoring information preservation (flat or log curve) ....

..or by approximating scene brightness (typical photographic "S" curve) or hyper-realism (HDR technique). Within this we also have the ability to alter tones locally to either realistic or non-realistic effect.

Throughout most of photography history we have gotten by with 10-12 stops of captured dynamic range via chemical and electronic means. Today one manufacturer offers a sensor that extends that range by several stops. This is a good thing. But do those extra stops make a well exposed photo stronger in any meaningful way? Some (apparently most here) would argue yes. I'd argue that this additional range at the extreme ends of the spectrum offer us at best "negligible" improvement in the quality of our images. Nice to have, but not necessary.

I fall in the camp of photographers who prefer graphically strong, relatively realistic looking imagery. I'll crush any shadow that gets in the way of that goal. Avedon, Penn, Salgado, Adams, all hero's of mine, felt the same way.

I'm not interested in backlit skies that are rendered in tones similar to objects on the ground because that's not what I see with my eyes. I think the exposure methods shown in Jon's article and the "tulip" photo are ludicrous. That's just me. In answering my own question, I don't think 14 stops adds much over 12 stops. You may see it differently.

The coming wave of HDR monitors will truly change the equation surrounding higher dynamic range cameras. While most of what is being done so far is on the video side of the equation, we'll see the same benefits in computer monitors and other screens. Through a combination of brighter backlights, localized dimming and new color profiling, we will for the first time be able to see images displayed at dynamic ranges closer to what has been captured. Laser projection will bring greater DR to cinemas as well. This is good news, as there will be less of a need to compress push and mold the information into the limited space of current displays and print. (We may actually find ourselves needing more than 14 stops.) At Cinegear Gale Tattersall ASC described viewing HDR footage on a new prototype Canon monitor -- "it had the ability to make you uncomfortable", he said. Others described it as like looking through a window. Exciting times.

Ansel Adams most certainly did not feel your way, as he would do all kinds of trickery similar to 'tonemapping' to compress a lot of dynamic range of the negative into the low DR of the print. While still using the full tonal range of the print to maximize the utility of that output format.

Common misconception to quote Ansel Adams as somehow against things like DR.

But your point about output devices is a good one. Currently, we have to tonemap our images for the low DR/brightness monitors we currently have. Some of us prefer that over an image with blown whites or clipped blacks - that's an artistic choice. For the many, many people who actually loved the tulip shot, your perspective is irrelevant. The sky actually has a nice tonal transition to completely blown, so the sky is, in fact, not pulled back into midtones as you suggest. Any more brightening of it got rid of the texture in the clouds, & any more darkening of shadows crushed the tulip stems to an unrealistic black.

I actually find skies blown to white, or brightened to clip tonal transitions between clouds, or shadows plugged to black - which is certainly not what my eyes saw - to be what is ludicrous. I also find overdone HDR to be ludicrous. But the tulip shot is - to me - not overdone HDR, at least not on a properly profiled, gamma 2.2 monitor.

Also, if you go to any film/video conference with Hollywood cinematographers, all they're clamoring on about is more DR, for more exposure latitude and tone-mapping ability in post-processing. Presumably b/c they can't afford to just throw away shots that cost millions, or reshoot, and b/c particularly in video, you have tens of other things to worry about.

Also, realize that when you say that 11 EV is fine compared to 14 EV, you're literally arguing that it's OK for your camera to sprinkle noise over your darkest tones.

Also, it's not that I failed to contextualize the scores/measurements, it's more that every time we write a page or piece on DR, I shouldn't be required to also state 'oh and by the way, for all these types of shots, DR doesn't matter'. What a waste of space that would be. It'd be like writing a piece of some advances in AF, & then being required to also show a whole lot of f/16 examples or other unchallenging AF situations (static subjects) where AF doesn't matter.

Huh?

Instead, this was a technical piece that showed some of the ramifications of DR, by plotting the SNR of all the tones for the 5DS R and D810.

And to contextualize, I showed an example of where the DR limitations can be an issue in the real world.

But for every one of these pieces/examples, there are those that will constantly find ways to ignore the presentation, & pose red herrings. Like 'who would want to keep the details in the window in Jon's shots'. Yes, b/c that was the point of Jon's test...

Also, every time someone says things like 'but look at Barry's example - which clearly shows DR doesn't matter', they ignore the work of people like Marc Adamus & Ryan Dyar who've moved from Canon to Sony and/or Nikon & literally stated that the extended DR of cameras like the Nikon D800-series have done the following for them:

"Honestly, the expanded DR of the a7r and d800 is really enjoyable. I could still make the types of images I like with the 5d2, but having the wider DR just makes things easier not having to blend exposures as often."

Direct quote from a forum post on our very own site, here. And these guys have made compelling images with their Canon gear as well, but that doesn't mean it's not easier for them to make such images with gear that's better in performance for a metric that's very important for their photography.

In fact, it's kind of funny - I used to often state in my posts about dynamic range 'but that doesn't mean you can't make similar compelling images of high dynamic range scenes with lower DR cameras like Canon SLRs; my favorite landscape photographer, Ryan Dyar, in fact shoots Canon'.

Then Ryan Dyar himself walked into that thread stating what he stated above - that he used to shoot Canon.

Why ignore these masters' perspectives, but pull up the perspective of someone's photography which, ostensibly, does not appear to even require much input dynamic range b/c it's completely different from the type of challenging light photography that does benefit from lower noise sensors?

Hi Rishi. Thanks for showing your stripes in response here. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way. It's good to find a writer who is passionate about what he writes, even if we don't agree. I've certainly shown my stripes as well. On to a couple of your points.

Ansel Adams was not above crushing a black or two in order to create a dramatic print. While the zone systam was designed to maximize the utility of a negative given the range of available printing papers, one only has to see a demonstration of early and late prints of "Moonrise" to know that some shadow detail never made it to the print. His prints were filled with inky solid blacks when he felt compelled. In fact his prints were far more contrasty than many of the landscape photographers from earlier in the 20th century, who preserved every detail on their negatives with sumptuous, but flat as hell, platinum printing.

And, as far as I know, he never exposed for the sun and then tried to push his exposure 3-5 stops. (Which is the only reason that tulip photo exhibits tremendous noise virtually everywhere in the image). In fact, while Adams acknowledged that film was capable of capturing up to zone XII, he also noted that it was all but impossible to print anything above IX and hold detail in the shadows...meaning he wrote off that extra highlight DR. (You've made it the most important tone in your tulip composition (that is, until you start pointing out how important the noise in the shadows has become).

As to the "real world" context you provided with the tulip image. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that in reality this image is simply designed to prove something. It's designed to break the camera. Sure it's real world as far as "pointing your camera into the sun and underexposing by a massive amount" is real world.....

But perhaps a few other less extreme examples (in the article) would have provided additional context. (and as to it looking HDR...welllll it may not be...but your grade certainly is heading in that direction. I did a quick grade of the jpg, compressing the sky tones and the mid- shadows which puts more emphasis on the row of tulips and less on the noisy blue grey dirt --no clipping and only slightly more "black" in the deep shadows, and I think it looks more natural to me. If I only had that raw file :-).Finally, you're upset about needing to contextualize a technical article as if its your job is to help people understand the importance of that technology. Sorry, can't help you there.I remember a day when "Dynamic Range" was simply one page of a 30 page review here on DPR. Today it gets its own article (and it's own drum major) timed very closely to the release of the camera. Sorry for questioning it. My Bad.

You added something (since I started writing) to the end of your last post that makes a lot of sense. You started talking about how some photographers "need" this kind of dynamic range....because apparently I (you called me out) don't. You know you're mostly right on that...although I think if you dig into my website you'll see me shooting into the sun once in a while too :-). But from your last comments I really feel your love for a certain type of photography and photographer, and the camera they've switched to (let's just say your masters I've never heard of...but that's beside the point). I realize in the article, at the end you qualify your story a bit by talking about the 5dsr relevance for landscape photographers...but this isn't the thrust of the story. The thrust is the DXO scores. So either a little more context would be helpful to the rest of us, or a new headline might be in order.

My comments are not about whether you can make good photos with any camera. Sure, a highly skilled photographer can make a great photo with whatever tool you place into their hands.

That is entirely beside the point. The fundamental point is...why would I spend so much money these days to buy a 50mp Canon camera, when I can get something that performs better for less...nearly a thousand dollars less at that? Canon seems to be demanding ever larger price premiums for their equipment. Technologically speaking, Canon is at best "on par" with their two largest competitors: Sony and Nikon. Ergonomics and menu systems don't play a factor here, purely subjective. Technology is what were talking about.

The only area where I believe Canon does have an edge is in the customer service department. I've had to use that a couple of times, and the service was excellent. However, is that really worth the price premium Canon is asking for these days? Personally, for what I shoot...eh, not so much.

The other point is not about making great photos. The other point is about being able to make great photos in ever more challenging situations. Photography is, at it's core, all about light. Light is our paint, the camera our paintbrush. Noise is the excess water in our watercolors, eating away at the quality of our images.

The 5Ds may be the highest resolution DSLR on the market...but I think most pros a long time ago came to the conclusion that megapixels aren't the most important factor in IQ. What was the matra that just about every professional Canon user chanted back before the advent of the 1DX? I can't remember how many times I heard "fewer megapixels, better megapixels", or some variant thereof. Canon tried to deliver on that front with the 1D X. Well, they delivered on the "fewer" part...not so much on the "better" part.

More megapixels is better, but only if you have the rest of the technology to keep those pixels at least as good as what came before.

The company that has truly delivered on the "better" pixels front is Sony. Nikon comes in a close second, taking Sony's amazing sensor and doing even more amazing things with it. More megapixels and better megapixels...hard to complain about that! :P

The 5Ds....? Eh...more megapixels....worse megapixels. Canon had to cut corners to deliver the 5Ds. I hear a lot of people spouting the same old crap about Canon trying to protect other models, purposely gimping models, etc. I don't believe any of that.

I believe, fundamentally, that Canon is critically limited by their technology, and possibly by their fabs. I have no concrete evidence, however there seems to be no indication so far that Canon has used anything newer and more advanced than their 500nm fabrication technology for any large sized sensors. At one point ChipWorks dissected some Canon sensors, and only a prototype P&S sensor seemed to be using anything more advanced. We haven't seen anything since...nothing.

This is Canon's only problem area. Their sensor's. When everything else works, when metering and AF and image stabilization and all the other features and functionality of a camera work...image quality comes down to the sensor, and all of it's supporting electronics (i.e. ADC units, image processing pipeline, etc.)

I can nail focus with my 5D III and my 600mm f/4 L II lens over 90% of the time. I can meter right. I can quickly adjust ISO and EC to compensate for changing light. The frame rate is a bit low, but it's just good enough to give me a keeper every burst. Any issues I have with IQ have nothing to do with all the rest of Canon's technology.

When I open my images up in a RAW editor...if there is an issue, the issue always has to do with: dynamic range. I ETTR religiously, as it's the only way to make the most out of a Canon sensor. It rarely matters when you have challenging light. If you clip the signal, it's gone. If you bury it in read noise, it's gone. That's it.

"But your article really only proves the obvious...that the Sony has MORE dynamic range than the 5D3. Thanks for that. I'm trying to imagine any photographer in his right mind exposing for some unimportant detail out a window, when what he wants us to see is some detail in the deep shadows of the foreground. You may feel like its a fair test, and it is if you're simply comparing range...but to me, everything about this approach to exposure is simply wrong."

Barry, with the above, you are either intentionally being thick, or you truly and simply do not understand exposure in a digital world. For now I can only assume the latter, which seems more logical given your film background. This is a simple fact: Exposure in the digital world is NOT the same as exposure in the film world. In the film world, you largely had one chance to get exposure right: in the camera, on the scene. You might be able to push or pull a bit by messing with chemical baths, and with a little bit of dodge and burn.

Things are VASTLY more simple in the digital world. Expose to preserve the highlights. That's it. That is exposure in the digital world. A RAW image is a digital signal, with very high precision, and very high fluidity. Assuming your camera makes use of as much of the numeric space the camera is capable of delivering (i.e. 14 bits, 2^14), you can have IMMENSE freedom to tune an exposure in post, and make it do whatever you want it to do. Exposure in the digital world is not about creating a perfect photo strait out of camera. Exposure in the digital world is simply capturing the light you need to create your art.

Once you have your photons, you are free to realize your artistic vision from them. In the Canon world, and to be quite frank, the MFD world excluding those that use Sony's 50mp MF Exmor, exposure is about maximizing exposure to get as much of the signal above a high noise floor. It's about making compromises to get the shot. It's about running risks with your highlights.

Sony has taken us closer to the kind of freedom we used to have with film than anyone else. With film, you had a soft rolloff of exposure into the highlights and shadows. Depending on the film, you may have had significantly more dynamic range than if you exposed normally, and with adjusted chemical baths you could push or pull exposure to recover information. Sony Exmor sensors give us that same kind of capability.

Exposure in the digital world is not about getting a perfect picture out of the camera. Exposure in the digital world is about preserving the ranges of tones you care about most. With Sony sensors, you can preserve significantly more tones than you ever could with a Canon camera. It doesn't matter if the OOC photo looks well exposed or not. Making your images look well exposed is entirely a post processing thing.

All that matters about the OOC photo is that it contains all the information you need to create the image you want! That is what Sony's DR delivers.

"I'm not interested in backlit skies that are rendered in tones similar to objects on the ground because that's not what I see with my eyes. I think the exposure methods shown in Jon's article and the "tulip" photo are ludicrous. That's just me. In answering my own question, I don't think 14 stops adds much over 12 stops. You may see it differently."

Barry, you have stated this twice. That you think the exposure techniques we use are "ludicrous". Could you further expound upon that, and clearly explain why? Is that sentiment simply coming from your film background?

As I said above...exposure in the digital world is not the same as exposure with film. Outside of a few films that had incredibly shallow and LONG shoulders in the highlights, which if you processed the film properly, could be used to greatly expand their dynamic range...with film, you had to expose properly, or risk loosing the shot. It was much harder or impossible (if you didn't process the film yourself) to recover...

...a botched exposure. With digital, so long as you have not clipped the highlights, and so long as you have low enough read noise, you can recover almost anything.

Quick note. I intentionally clipped the highlights in my test shots, to make sure that I was absolutely using every single ounce of dynamic range both cameras had. Now, it should be obvious, but that is NOT how I recommend exposing...that was a attribute of my test. In the real world, I would use both cameras differently, and, I would use the A7s quite differently than the 5D III. With the 5D III, I would have exposed a third of a stop less, which would have preserved the highlights, albeit minimally. With the A7s, I'd have had no problems underexposing the image a full stop, to make sure I did not lose any of the highlights. Because of the shadow recovery, I'd have still had a great photo, with deep shadow detail.

I'm honestly confused why that seems so alien to some photographers. That you should expose for the tones you care about, rather than exposing for OOC results. I guess if your remotely shooting JPEG on a camera at a sporting event, with the camera directly plugged into a high speed network that will deliver the shots strait to your publisher...then OOC IQ is pretty darn important. Your still going to be making compromises, you might clip the highlights or block up some shadows...but those compromises aren't as important as getting the shots published and online as soon as possible.

However, if we take landscapes as an example. We don't care about instantly publishing a scene to an article on a news site moments after the photo is taken. The speed of development is irrelevant. What is relevant, however, is that you capture the highlights in the sky, without losing the details in that very interesting rock hiding in the shadow of that tree over there.

With the landscape, you care about a specific range of tones. You care about some particular level of highlights down through a particular level of shadows. You expose for the range of tones that matter to you, to your artistic vision, your style. Damn how the data looks strait out of camera. Get the data! You can rework it, reprocess it, shift it, enhance it, crush the blacks or recover them, whatever you want. All that matters with your exposure is that you captured the whole entire range of tones you were interested in.

This isn't something new, either. We've been doing that for decades. Graduated ND filters have been a staple tool in many a landscape photographer's kit for longer than I've been alive. HDR has been a recent tool, albeit one not without it's limitations. GND filters and HDR are just other ways of exposing for the tones you care about.

The exposures that come off of Sony Exmor sensors ARE HDR images, that don't have the issues GNDs or HDRs have.

Barry, u Know that AA used what was best at his time nad times have changed right? New thechniques have emerged and people are using evey single bit of this new technology to make some amazing stuff. According to your retorics we should all use the camera obscura cause some people used it back then and got some results with it?Ive seen your work and it has a lot of blown up higlights and deep shadows. Some people dont like that. They really dont. What works for you doesnt work for everybody else. And clinging to those 7 DR and the print process is just plain wrong. I do a lot of compressing and expanding in the middle tones too, for example. Every single bit of DR helps there. You can argue all u can but your logic is just flawed in that regard.You seem biased, really biased. Favoring Canon for whatever reason. Megapixel war ended a long time ago. People used even 10MP cameras to print huge billboards. And yet u dont seem to think that those were enough?

Hellraiser. Look. The only time I was ever interested in Ansel Adams and the zone system was when I was in high school and he was still printing. My discussion of him was based on the writer of this article calling me out based on my assessment of his work. I was using digital cameras before many on this site were taking photographs.

I'm sorry you don't like my work. Most of my clients do.

As for me favoring Canon. Good luck finding a quote from me on that. I've said very kind things about Nikon/Sony in this thread. And I've never argued that additional DR is a bad thing. I just feel this article purposely distorts it's importance. I'm about the only person on this thread not advocating for a camera. I shoot Hasselblad. Please don't buy one.

Barry, I would dispute the notion that this article intentionally *distorts* the value of DR. I think the author of this article took issue with those implications as well. Take things in the extant context here. This is the age of dynamic range. Were not at the beginning of that age...having lots of DR in a camera is not a new thing. It started with the K5 back in 2010...a friend had underexposed a K5 image by a significant amount, to the point it looked like a nearly pure black image, with a faint bit of highlight outside a window. With what I think was a four stop lift, the image just looked like an ISO 1600 shot. I was blown away. (And, at the time, really hopeful that Canon would offer the same thing in the 5D II successor.) The D7000 got this incredible DR next, then it exploded onto the scene in a big way with the D800. Were FIVE YEARS into the age of DR...and Canon's best response is the 5Ds. The importance of Canon's position in the age of DR is not distorted or overblown.

Canon has been my brand of choice for a long time now, about seven years? I still prefer their glass, much prefer it. However after waiting for years for Canon to get on the ball and deliver some class-leading DR in their cameras, I have no more faith. The 5Ds is truly a disappointment for someone who has been looking for a landscape camera for a long time. I still buy Canon for my action photography...still very high grade stuff, great ergos, great handling.

I cannot help but be immensely impressed by Sony's offerings these days, however...and their compatibility with the rest of my photography kit. The A7r II feels like the camera Sony designed just for me. I'm ecstatic about that...and even more disappointed in Canon for not delivering something like it first.

Canon is at least five years behind the times when it comes to their sensor technology. That is non-trivial. It matters, which is why so many people bring the facts of Canon's less capable technology.

Rishi, you show an example in your flower shot of how terrible the DR is...we don't know what the raw file looks like or how you exposed, based on this and dxo graphs etc you illustrate how poor the canon compares to the rest...the reason why I say go look at other photographers work is to give a bit of balance and that many competent photographers get by famously with these canon sensors.....of course there are others that use Nikon and Sony too, but that's the whole point, we use what we like and that gets us what we want. It's about personal preferences and for many here to say I would be better served by B rather than A is presumptious to say the least and then We are not allowed to defend our choices....any competent photographer knows that Sony sensors have wider DR and cleaner shadows, the question then is why do they still keep on using them? The are many many answers to that, and not needing or having found a workaround the extra DR capabilities is just one of them.

Ok, maybe i went a bit overboard for calling u for favouring Canon.And don't get me wrong. I dont wanna say your work is bad, nothing like that. But u know that... Only that i have a speciffic taste in photography. A lot of people do actually. I can see that in your work you try to preserve real life colours and tones. And thats fine for the type of work you do. But I (and many others) adore more surreal form of photography, and that is where every extra step of DR comes in handy. Its same as people liking Picasso for example. They didnt buy his stuff 'cause his work was realistic.

Of course, the coolest thing about all this choice is just that, we can all now get exactly what we want , with almost no compromises ! Anyway I am sitting in the airport lounge, on my way to Italy! So I am going to put his whole DR thing behind me for the mo and concentrate on all things Italian...

Sorry Jon, for the delay in accepting your challenge. I’ve started this screed several times with the goal of bringing it to a manageable length, but each time it grew longer, until I gave up. Perhaps I can cut to the chase. But lets start with a few quotes:

—Barry…. you are either intentionally being thick, or you truly and simply do not understand exposure in a digital world….This is a simple fact: Exposure in the digital world is NOT the same as exposure in the film world.—Things are VASTLY more simple in the digital world. Expose to preserve the highlights. That's it. That is exposure in the digital world.—Barry, you have stated this twice. That you think the exposure techniques we use are "ludicrous". Could you further expound upon that, and clearly explain why? Is that sentiment simply coming from your film background?

Ok…well here goes….I have referred negatively to the exposure of your test and Rishi's tulips because they are both massively underexposed.

Now, I know you've already explained that in todays digital world the only thing that matters relative to exposure is protecting the highlights (you’re dead wrong about that.), and you suggested that because I shot film in my 30's, that I probably didn't know this. (I'm 52, and couldn't load a roll of 120 in my hasselblad today if I tried but that’s beside the point). What apparently escapes you is the fact that the concept of "protecting the highlights" was born in the era of shooting transparency film (and, fwiw, analog video cameras). But we’re not here to talk film, so I won’t (and really, I haven’t). Although I’d be missing an important segue if I didn’t mention the fact that because the range of transparency film was quite limited, about 8-9 stops depending on the emulsion, trained photographers learned to use a variety of camera and lighting techniques to lower the contrast of a scene. Often one had to make decisions as to which highlights to keep & which ones to let go "clear".

The phrase "important highlights" was a common one back in school, because in most cases it was impossible to keep tone in every area of a frame when you weren't shooting in a studio.

With the current crop of amazing cameras from Sony and Nikon, certain photographers are floating the idea that proper exposure means "no clipped highlights" (this despite the relative impossibility of retaining detail in most specular highlights). And Jon, you certainly make a good argument for this concept with your examples from the Sony. But unfortunately this approach to exposure, while effective in normal and lower contrast scenes, runs into few problems in high contrast scenes like the one you captured in your demonstration. When we look at a histogram of your initial image we see that 90% of the tonality has been posited in the bottom 20% of the range. Now, you would argue that we simply can move those tones around at will and everything will work out just fine. But that's simply not true.

We all know that the number of tones available in the shadows is far less than what is available in the lighter tones, yet you’ve compressed virtually all the tones of the image into the most compromised area of the sensor. In your extreme example we see there are in fact some (small) problems with the shadows even in the sony image, but the reality is that almost the entire range of the image has been compromised by this very bad technique. Hard to prove this sitting at my desk, but I imagine that if there was a person sitting on that couch, that we might see a few more flaws than slightly weird tonality and low shadow detail appearing throughout even the sony image.

Lets try a ridiculous experiment. My Kitten Midnight, she loves to hide in this black velvet box we keep next to our sofa, and in there she likes to play WWF with the blackbird next door. I'd love you to shoot her and her friend in this exact scene at the end of the sofa you zoomed in on. Using your exposure theory.

Jon, Every camera has it's limits and at some point the photographers job is to make some decisions. The scene I just described has, let’s say 16 stops of DR. So what are you going to do...hold those highlights...or get paid for photographing my cat? As I stated quite some time ago, Had you increased your exposure by approx 2 stops you would have lost nothing but a little unimportant highlight detail that is only distracting at this point. The vast majority of tones in the rest of the image would have looked substantially better on both cameras. If this shot had been properly exposed, you’d have had plenty of room to capture my cat with your Sony. (But wait….your original test didn’t include the cat right….so….you didn’t need to expose for the cat then…but oh… you wouldn’t have anyway…because it’s only the highlights…sorry…I keep getting confused).

So, you may ask….Mr. Barry…smarty pants…what is proper exposure? Well I'd say it starts with placing a middle grey somewhere near the middle of the histogram. If the highlights clip, we decrease exposure as far as necessary to make sure important highlights don't clip. If this means the grey card ends up sitting in the bottom 20% of the histogram, we have some decisions to make. Some of them might actually involve photographic technique. One might involve giving up a tiny bit of unimportant highlight range. That my friend, is proper exposure.

Now certainly one could argue (as I have) that this is just merely a test to show that the Sony sensor has more dynamic range, that you wouldn’t actually use this method to expose this scene in real life…except that you have actually argued that if it wasn’t a test, you would have happily underexposed further so you could hold every bit of the highlight detail ...., even though the majority of important tones would be further compromised.

Recently you said something….“I’m honestly confused why that seems so alien to some photographers. That you should expose for the tones you care about, rather than exposing for OOC results.”

Now when I look at your test and Rishi’s tulips, I try to imagine which tones I care about. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not usually hired to photograph the vague, white, suburban view out the window when I shoot interiors . I’m usually hired to shoot the interior…the furniture. The walls. The Art. The paint. A proper exposure would have improved this shot immensely, yet you suggest that you would happily underexpose it more. Rishi’s tulips are different case. He can certainly argue that the sky and the tulips are both important. He hasn’t shown us what the Sony cam would do with this, but certainly exposing the Canon this way is a mistake. That’s because his example is to designed to show and in fact “concoct” a defect in the camera.

There I go again. Accusing Rishi of something nefarious. (The fact that he admitted he has a bunch of heroes who’ve all switched away from canon, and that he felt it was an important message that he needed to communicate with the article certainly would never make me think he was biased).

The problem is that he is showing us a massively underexposed image, compressing the vast majority of the tonality of the image into the worst 25% of the range, expanding that tonality far beyond what a sane person would do, and then telling us that it’s the camera’s fault that there’s noise in the shadows.

It’s not the camera’s fault there is noise in the shadows. It’s Rishi’s.

(on vacation last weekend I ran a test. I shot a portrait of my girlfriend under a covered bridge in New Hampshire with sunlit trees and clouds in the background. The shot had more contrast than your test…easily. I shot one using your method, one using my method. The shadow tones and detail using my method had far less noise, better color and substantially more detail, and lost the tiniest bit of separation between a few obscured sunlit clouds. When exposed properly, even in what I’d consider an absolutely stupid situation contrast-wise, the canon looked great. (Imagine what the sony would have looked like!) When exposed 2 stops darker, I gained just a hint more detail in the highlights…but my girlfriend, the inside of the bridge… nothing but noise…looked just like Rishi’s foreground tulips.

Here’s another way he could have demonstrated the low dynamic range of the 5dsr. He could have exposed it properly, using a grey card in the scene or just getting that damn dirt in the foreground to look something like dirt on the LCD. He could have let the tones fall where they properly would have. He could have pulled the highlights down instead of pulling the shadows up (there’s so much more range there folks!). There would have been clipped highlights. He could say “There…see….told ya!” But Rishi didn’t do this…the problem being that clipped highlights are awfully common. Not nearly as dramatic as noisy, banded shadows…..because….those….those look like a defect.

Jon…these cameras have a finite dynamic range, and no matter where you place the grey tone—in the middle where it belongs or down around 10% where you two think it goes, the camera will display exactly the same amount of range.

Proper exposure takes into account all the tones in the scene and involves hard decisions about what to emphasize and what to let go. If you were photographing a polar bear on a white sofa in your scene, I might say you nailed it. Photographing a dark brown sofa inside a shaded room while exposing for an amorphous sunlit white exterior is, well, ludicrous.

Here’s the thing. You’ve got a camera you love and it’s capable of this very cool parlor trick. I’m not kidding, the sony sensor IS impressive in what it can do. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can simply throw out the rules of proper exposure with this camera. It might work for proving that the sony has superior DR than your former camera company, but ignoring your image in favor of the peak value on the camera’s histogram is not going to do anything for your photography. As I’ve said before, I don’t think that DR is worth the ink that’s been spent on it recently in this forum.

Barry, Rishi/DPR thinks camera from technology point but misses that there is the art part of photography There are no measurements or limit with the art part and the only limit is the photographers’ imagination limits. You can see it from how DPR guys frame/take their sample shots. What they miss is the objective part in their assessment… why do I need this camera? I also saw the same done for the 7D2 where they used a wideangle lens and shot at 100ISO and proved that the D7000 has better DR than 7D2, which everybody already knew. Knowledgeable people will know all these and these cameras are quite complex and targeted for knowledgeable people. After reading their review where I didn’t get my info, I actually went to the dealer, loan a 7D2 and played with it. I spend time reading real users experience and finally bought one. It took me several months to master the 7D2 and I don’t do a leaving on photography. It’s not a camera for wideangle shots; it’s a telephoto gear…in simple sense.

continue...DPR spends a lot of time to prove DXO results like DR, why? I think they are incapable of finding out more about a camera purpose because they simply have limited imagination. Art is very subjective and hard to appreciate a review done on a tool used for art by those lacking on it.

You know. what's funny is that in the original dynamic range article on the 5dsr, Rishi gives a mostly nuanced description (and a link to the hilariously underexposed original image) of what he was doing and why he was doing it, and really I don't have a problem with that, although his description of his exposure as being "exposed as far to the right as possible" left me shaking my head a little.

Its the inclusion of this photo, without similar commentary, in the DxO analysis that got me riled up, because this photo is not representative of the camera's dynamic range in any useful way. As it was the only photo included in this article, it at least seems like evidence of a hatchet job. (not the first time a website had a youngster write an inflammatory post in service of page views :-). And yes, you're right. Writing an analysis that simply confirms what we already know from the data isn't a particularly good use of space, in this old fart's opinion.

There are too many misconceptions and wrong statements here for me to address, but a couple quick points:

Barry: ETTR philosophy states you give the camera as much exposure as possible without clipping any channels. No need to shake your head; I did exactly what that philosophy states. This way, you guarantee you have no ugly clipped highlights/transitions. I'll take lower quality shadows over nuclear-bomb-like skies any day - except I don't have to when I use a camera with high dynamic range. I get both: unclipped highlights, low noise shadows.

Vignes: You're complaining about us approaching gear from a tech standpoint when we're a dedicated gear review site? That's be like telling PC World to stop reviewing PC components. Your comments literally make no sense. Also, what's with the implication that DR is all we care about? You realize we test many other aspects of cameras: ISO performance, AF, etc.

Also, we try to talk about tech aspects that make it easier to create the art.

Re: The 7D2 vs D7000 DR shootout, you said: "Knowledgeable people will know all these and these cameras are quite complex and targeted for knowledgeable people."

And how would those knowledgeable people know these things if no one provided the data/tests for them?

That's what we were doing - doing the test & providing the data, so that knowledgeable people might learn.

You're comments are tantamount to saying the chicken can exist without the egg.

We're literally trying to put a real-world context to DXO's DR numbers by showing you visual results from the real world, to make it more relevant to the photographer, and you complain? You want us to be more focused on the photograph, and then you complain when we try to present more photographically relevant tests.

Interesting. Are you just hurt over the underperformance of the camera you own in that test?

Also, Barry: the tulip shot is not a hatchet test, nor 'unrepresentative of the camera's DR in any useful way'. Those that properly understand DR, & how to test it, know you don't simply expose for a midtone, & show where highlights clip. B/c that leaves it up to the camera to decide proper midtone exposure, which introduces an unnecessary variable.

The way I did it - proper ETTR - is the most rigorous way to test DR, & mimics the way it's tested for in the lab (by DXO), where you count back the number of stops from clipping down to where image detail is lost in noise. It's also how proper landscape photographers expose- they don't expose for the midtones & pray highlights don't clip. You could do that with negative film which had a nice rolloff in the highlights, but you can't do that with digital, which has a harsh clipping at the upper end. With digital, you expose for the highlights, then tonemap the shadows. In fact, that's how some cameras simulate logarithmic highlight rolloff.

Rishi - You're absolutely right that the "testing" regimen for DR involves determining the clipping point and then establishing a range based on a specific SNR in the deepest shadows. It is not however a proper method for exposing this scene. While you may be able to "technically" claim to be shooting ETTR with your approach, compare your histogram to any typical illustration of ETTR and you will see a vast difference. While you have latched on to the "rule" you've missed the concept... that tones in the upper range of the sensor are "better" and have more gradations than those in the lower range. Almost all your tones are in the bottom 15% of the histogram. This is NOT ETTR. This is "NCH"...very different thing. Regargless, ETTR or NCH (what I call ETFL) or frankly any dogma regarding exposure typically fails when we get into "stupid" contrast situations like this.

You've stated that to you noisy shadows are preferential to to neon clipped highlights. (but then you point out how that's a problem in the article, so....) Well....We disagree on this. I prefer foreground/subject tonality to background sky detail. (But then, in those 150 years of great photography I referred to before, I can't remember one with the sun in the picture, so there's MY bias). I can always "roll" off the curve of a clipped highlight if I need to. (or as you said you would in your original article: use any of a variety of camera/post techniques that would all involve proper exposure of the bottom 4/5ths of your photo).

Finally, how exactly is showing shadows that are likely "below" the measured DR of this camera (indicated by the level of noise in them) somehow more scientific than showing a few clipped highlights?

I'm curious if you ever processed out any of your brighter exposures of this image. In my tests of overexposure with the 5Dsr, I see that canon has applied a certain amount of desaturation to the brightest tones, similar to what they've started doing with their soon to be released C300MkII (and the Arri Alexa). If you haven't tried it, you might want to. You might be surprised ( if the screen shot of the raw capture you provided is accurate, based on my experiences, quite a bit of highlight is easily recovered from this shot and probably from those a stop or two brighter, Tones that look clipped on the original histogram are often not due to the highlight compression Canon applies on all of its picture styles.)

Thanks Rishi for participating in this discussion. I really appreciate all that DPReview has done over the years for advancing the technology side of photography. Your article is valuable even if I disagree with the angle it takes.

I've learned a lot about this issue in the past two weeks. Likely it won't affect my work very much, but at least I have a better understanding of what a certain segment of the photo community values. If anything it's got me out there testing the limits of this camera in a way I would have never considered. All good stuff.

Barry, the fact that you state "it won't affect my work very much" indicates that you haven't really learned much. If you had learned what you could have learned from the discussion above, you would be questioning your steadfast adherence to your existing notion of what exposure is. That's fine, I've had this discussion many times over the years, and some people just don't want to understand what digital exposure is really all about. The truth is that more dynamic range, regardless of how much, COULD affect your work...but only if you open your mind to the possibilities that two or three additional orders of magnitude of tonal sensitivity offer. Until you do that, well...no, it certainly won't affect your work. ;) It won't affect it because you won't let it affect it.

Oh Jon,You know I've been awfully polite to you. You seem like an intelligent guy. But, unfortunately, like too many people on this forum, you always seen to fall back on calling people "thick" and otherwise insinuating that your opponent is somehow less intelligent and capable than yourself. Now, after I offered you the courtesy of explaining (per your request) my position, rather than discussing the merits of extreme underexposure, you change back to the DPR forum tact of calling me an idiot. Who is being "steadfast" here? I went out and tested my camera using your approach and came to a conclusion. Your response to 1200 words of discussion is "you haven't learned very much".

Jon, I don't point my camera at the sun for a living. Rishi has said as much, that I don't need 14 stops of range in my work. He's right. I shoot models, with lights, and assistants. I craft images based on what I want them to look like, not based on how much range the camera will capture. When I shoot landscapes, I'm likely to do things that would upset your very core. So no, my work probably won't change because of what I've learned here.

When I forge into these forums, it's always with a smile on my face and a hunger to learn. 5 or 6 people here have, in one way or another, called me an idiot, and I've always come back with the same smile and offered earnest replies. I participate in several forums where the angst that you bring to almost every post is simply not welcome or tolerated. I think I'll head back there.

I've learned one other thing Jon, no matter how many times I praise your Sony, and I do it almost every post, you simply won't be satisfied until I've announced I've changed my system to yours. Because that's really what's going on here.

First, I did not call you thick. I said you seemed to either intentionally be choosing to be thick (i.e. you were using it as a debate tool, something people do), or that you truly did not understand digital exposure. I also stated that I chose to assume the latter.

I don't care what system you use. That is not the point, and if that's what your picking up here, then your missing the point. (Remember, I am primarily a Canon user.) The point is that exposure with digital cameras is not about exposing for the midtones, and dynamic range improves how much usable information you can gather during an exposure. There is no such thing as "extreme exposure"...there is simply exposure. Exposure is the duration of time the sensor is exposed to light. The key is whether you gather all of the tones in your scene with sufficient SNR within that duration.

I'm not calling you an idiot, however I honestly don't think you learned the key thing everyone was trying to teach you in this thread.

I do believe there is a distinction there. I think there are a LOT of common, and very wide spread, misconceptions about digital photography, exposure, dynamic range, SNR, etc. You are far from the only one, however you are not unique in your insistance that there is such a thing as "extreme exposure". That is a myth. It's a myth long past due for debunking. I strongly believe that anyone who can let themselves see past that myth and learn what a digital exposure really is will benefit from it in their work, especially if they eventually get a camera with more dynamic range than Canon's offer (maybe even a future Canon! :P)

One more thing. I AM a Canon shooter. The majority of my photography has thus far taken place with Canon DSLRs. Most of my terrestrial photography is done with a Canon 5D III and 600mm f/4 L II lens. I've rented a number of Sony cameras, and I love the IQ from them. There are some features that are a bit lackluster, and the A7r II is the first full Sony package...

...that I find truly compelling in every respect, and will probably buy. However it isn't just Sony cameras that have the improved image quality. Nikon uses the Exmor sensors in many of their DSLRs. Pentax uses Exmor sensors. Almost every other camera manufacturer out there uses Exmor sensors these days. There is a reason for that.

I really don't care what brand of camera people use. What I think matters is that misconceptions about what a digital exposure is, why more dynamic range can benefit IQ, why a test like Rishi has done is NOT invalid, but a very good TEST of a camera's capabilities, are dispelled.

We can agree to disagree, that's fine. However, I do believe you missed the most important thing everyone here was trying to teach you.

Oh, and for the record...this whole thread started because of words you spoke, about how ludicrous Rishi's article was, the insinuations that you made about everyone who really understands the value of increased dynamic range and tonemapping...

For the record I never referred to "extreme exposure", (I referred to your "extreme" 5ev push-- your words from your blog), I never called Rishi's article ludicrous (only exposures requiring 5 ev pushes designed to expose defects in sensors), and have never made a comment on this forum indicating anything about anyones intelligence, ability to understand or questioned their knowledge* or history.

My original post questioned what I perceive to be the over-emphasis on DR on this website, and later the illustration that was used to bolster it. An exposure that requires a 5-6 stop ev push is underexposed. Email any Canon or Sony engineer, or Thomas Knoll and they will confirm what I'm saying. If not I, then one of them must be capable of understanding modern exposure. There is a price to be paid by underexposing (just as there is when you overexpose a high contrast scene like these). If you expose a shot and end up with noisy banded shadows, it is not the cameras fault. Highlight tones are not, by some code, more important than shadow tones, especially when the shadow tones make up the subject of the photo.

You keep saying I don't understand exposure in the modern world, but I've posed several challenges to your "simple" approach to exposure in the modern world, and you've simply ignored those challenges. You've failed to explain in any meaningful way how I'm wrong. You just keep sayin' I don't understand. Ever think you might be the one missing the big picture? (no...I didn't think so.)

You've been taking pictures for about 6 years now. Thinking purely of myself, I'd have a real hard time walking up to a 30 yrs. full time working photographer to tell him he really didn't understand how to use his camera. I'd have a really hard time telling him I had a few things to teach him. When I met Arnold Newman I just sat there like a puppy dog and took it all in. When James Nachtwey ripped my portfolio apart after me being in the biz for 20 years...I just sat there and wept. Not comparing myself to them Jon, but I have a hard time understanding where you get your authority from.

And ... You might want to go back and read a few of your posts. You do seem to care very much that people would buy the New Canon when it lacks a "modern" sensor like the sony. You've said it plenty of times. Almost as many times as I've described the Sony as an awesome tool.

(*for the record, in one carefully worded post I did take down a troll who started it by calling me an idiot..if you re-read that post, you'll see that I didn't really call him anything...otherwise, I dare you to find a personal "insinuation" from me anywhere. Not my style, brother.

I don't think anyone else is listening right now, so if you want to have the last word...I won't stop you. I'm done.

Yes? If so, how can you possibly be so crazy as to give your sensor 5 EV less exposure than you could have given it at ISO 100, requiring the camera's analog amplifier to do a 5 EV 'push' in-camera before writing the digital file?

;)

Realize that when you call a digital 5 EV boost in ACR 'ludicrous', what you're actually saying is this:

'It's ridiculous to multiply your pixel values by 32 in ACR, but not at all ridiculous to multiply by 32 using an analog amplifier inside your camera!'

Rishi -- when I shoot at 3200...It's also usually dark outside. I expect noise...I expect really noisy and compromised shadows. When I shoot at ISO 100, I don't.

And I certainly don't expect to see the same dynamic range and image quality at 3200 as I do at 100. I also can't think of a time I've shot a daylit landscape at 3200. (also 3200 rarely flys in my world).

You see the distinction. Right?

This isn't in any way a cut at you or Jon, but it's interesting as Jon is an engineer -hobbyist photographer, and you often describe exposure in an engineer's terms. Maybe photographers and engineers expose differently. I don't know.

What surprises me is that the engineers around here can't stop focusing on the extremes of the range, and get to where most of the subject matter lives. In the middle. By exposing the way you have done in this image, the most important tones are compromised, because the image is 4-5 stops underexposed.

I consider the sky, the clouds, and sun-lit reds of the tulips to be 'the most important tones', and these tones are most certainly not underexposed 4-5 stops.

This obsession over midtone exposure really needs to desist in the digital camera realm. It just doesn't make sense.

And the talk of 'expectations' around ISO 100 and 3200 is an odd red herring - what if I were to publish all my shots without the ISO in the EXIF? Then what would matter, in the end, is whether the image has acceptable levels of noise or not, at your chosen viewing size.

For example, this image had many of its tones pushed 4 EV. Is it or is it not acceptable to you? If it's acceptable, then you can thank the high dynamic range of the camera it was shot on, instead of worrying about how inappropriate it is to push tones 4 EV at ISO 100.

Lets take this all in order1. Tulips not underexposed? When we examine the tones in the bottom 4/5 of the Canon Tulilp photo, the brightest tones (the highlights of the tulips) on the unadjusted raw image are 5-6 stops below where you have them in the final (and are frankly difficult to discern as they are reading below a 10% value.) The sky part I have no argument, because you have in fact exposed for the sky. I mentioned quite aways back in my response to Jon that your example is more complicated because you could certainly value the sky...and so exposure/technique decisions based on the camera you are using at the moment would need to be made. I cannot tell without the files in front of me, but I beleive an exposure of 2-3 stops brighter would allowed for greater shadow detail, better mid tone highlights (the tulips), and a negligible loss of sky tonality. There's no way this isn't a tough exposure. Exposing the Canon this way is a mistake in my opinion.

2. "obsession over midtone value" -- well lets look at your "proof of concept" photo, which we'll guess is the Sony body as there is no metadata attached to it. This image is a classic example of why extended dynamic range and the pursuit of it is problematic to me. The foreground is a flat mess because the "mid-tones"..the tulips are rendered too dark to keep them from being prominently brighter than the darkened and expanded range of the sky, -- there is simply too much range and you're having trouble fitting it all in, so your pushing it all to the middle and its become 'muddy". In fact to fit it all in, you've had to create composition that is essentially two photos with completely opposite renderings...top and bottom...the dividing line is clear. The tones within a few pixels of the sun are equal to the highlights on the tulips, something that just couldn't happen.

.... And this is the problem with all this dynamic range, That no matter how much you push and shove the tones around if you don't have a relatively stable, linear, middle range, you get into trouble with tone relationships that don't work.

The tree silhouettes in the background show stronger contrast than objects in the foreground...it's all backwards..not how it looked in real life and has compressed the depth of the photo -- while you're dismissing my antique exposure techniques, you might as well look up another "old-timer" concept -- atmospheric perspective -- it's how we perceive depth in 2d renderings of 3d space. Ignoring it is one of the reasons that HDR (and shots like this that look like HDR) generally look "wrong" to many photographers. You refer to my obsession with mid tones, but this image and the way it's processed is a perfect argument for why we maybe need to "obsess" about it a little more (seriously though..I obssess about skinny models. Mid-tones, not so much.)

The classic photographic method for handling all this excess DR is to compress the highlights and shadows by varying amounts and extend slightly the midrange which gives the photo good contrast. This is how film worked and this is how virtually every native camera gamma works. Some would argue this is how our eyes work too. This is why we obsess about getting the mid-tones right...if you plan on expanding the midtones, which is where in the FINAL output, most of your subject lies, then those tones should be coming from a good part of the sensor. In the case of your "upper photo" the sky part...you got this right. In the case of the lower photo (let's switch to the canon for a moment), You've got it really wrong. You may disagree with me on this, but I'll take my obsession with midtone value over whatever it is you call what you're doing in this image.

I found this article today....it's from a video guy....but you'd be surprised what video guys like this know about exposure and digital sensors. I always find him informative. He's a bit of a geek. You might like him. (my ideas come from 12 years of merrily over and underexposing digital cameras, but they align pretty strongly with his more studied approach.)http://www.provideocoalition.com/hitting-the-exposure-sweet-spot

3. Red herrings -- sorry, but you brought it up...You pointed out the noisy banded shadows in the Canon and then you said it's just the same as shooting at 3200. I don't need exif data to tell me the shadows are noisy. They are noisy. And they are noisy because you've underexposed. Or you shot at 3200...doesn't matter to me. In my world, and in your article, the noise in those shadows is unacceptable unless I'm shooting at a concert. I don't know many people who shoot daylit landscapes at 3200, but I know one who underexposes by 5 EV.

Like you said, it's the same, but the only way you get shadows to look like that is to do one or the other.

I noticed today your compadre Jordan shot a few nice, relatively high DR images with the 5ds in the Real World Gallery here on DPR. I don't think he pushed any of his images more than a half stop, and did very little to recover the highlights (he certainly could have, but I don't think there's that much that is objectionable in his shots). His shadows look great. I've shot a number of Hi DR tests with this camera and I've always been able to hold acceptable highlights if I wanted to without resorting to 5 EV pushes. My shadows look great too.

4) The Sony tulips -- It's no surprise that this image exhibits a greater range of tonality and lower noise through the shadows. We have the DxO data for that, and let me just stipulate one more time that I absolutely agree that the sony sensor is superior in Dynamic range and read noise at low ISO's. Now a 4EV push isn't a 5 or 6EV push, and when you qualify it by saying that "many of it's tones" were pushed, then I'd really want to see a screen shot of the unadjusted raw file before I comment (per your request) on it's "acceptability". The sky appears to have been artificially darkened by one means or another, and without looking at where the original foreground tones sat compared to your processed version, there's nothing I can really say that would be valid.

As I said before, you seem to be having trouble dealing with all that dynamic range in this photo, which has really been my point all along. I remember when I first saw the Canon image I thought it looked lovely in both the column view and the reduced size that Safari loaded it in. Once I viewed at 100% I saw the problems we've been discussing, but to me, just purely speaking of tone distribution, the canon (and you of course) got it about right. Sure, the noise and range in the shadows of the Sony is wonderful, but the image as processed isn't as strong as the Canon. To make the Nikon tulips look more realistic, one approach would be to compress the highlights and shadows a bit and expand out the range of the mid-tones (I tried it https://www.dropbox.com/s/sxet6dq9qfzu3rk/a7R-TulipSunriseAB.jpg?dl=0 )...but when you do that, you are essentially calling into question the need for the extra DR in the first place.

But rather than hauling out the Sony to prove it's better Rishi (damn it boy, we agree on this! :-). I'm curious why you didn't honor my earlier request. Lets talk about some of your "less underexposed" Canon images from the tullip shoot that only require a 3 or 4 ev push...maybe even a 2 ev push. This is what we've been arguing over. I'd love to see what could be done, or not done...with those.

@Rishi: Great last ditch effort...however it seems that the time is still not yet ripe for the old myths of exposure to die and the real facts about digital signals to be well understood among a majority of photographers. Might as well quit while your...miles ahead. ;) This is clearly not a debate with an end.

I am beginning to see distinct differences from the various opinions expressed above...If I may state it very very simple....Some are consumed by their cameras and all technical aspects of it and Others are consumed by their 'vision'.

@ Jon -- Nice final words from the man that prefers the system that doesn't work to the facts he just doesn't like (or simply chooses to ignore or discuss). Ah...I'm really not that bitter. All in good fun.

Here's an article for you: http://www.provideocoalition.com/the_not_so_technical_guide_to_s_log_and_log_gamma_curves (again, a video article, but one that talks about "the real facts" about how raw exposure works -right at the beginning there's a chart that pretty much spells out why you probably shouldn't place 80% of your tonality 7-8 stops below maximum white. You guys enjoy your muddy, muddy world. Me? I'm gonna put my sunglasses on and go burn a few highlights. Looks like it's going to be a hot one. Cheers.

Barry, the 5DS gallery Jordan shot most certainly does not have high dynamic range scenes in it, & your thinking it does frankly speaks to your unfamiliarity with high dynamic range scenes (no offense intended). The only scene that even has a large range of tones in it is the shot w/ the windows, and you'll note what's beyond is blown to white - which in that case is OK, b/c there's no detail there. While a beautiful gallery, those scenes do not challenge many cameras today with respect to DR.

Also, you do realize I shot the entire recent [Sigma 24-35mm F2 gallery] on a 5DS R, yes? I know when to use dynamic range, and when not to... & there's really only one shot in there that ends up showing the DR limitations of the 5DS R.

Also, the Sony shot may be a perfect demo to you of why DR doesn't matter to you, but it's also a perfect example of why DR does matter to anyone who likes that pink tulip photo (myself, & many, many others who've complimented it, e.g.).

DR gives you option to put make those darker tones in the image visible, but you don't have to. Your comments seem to indicate you think DR can actually be a bad thing; it never is, it always just gives you more flexibility.

Furthermore, if you like the Canon shot more than the Sony shot, that has nothing to do with the cameras, & everything to do w/ my processing (and the fact that the pink tulips are pink, not red). I simply processed the Sony shot differently. Perhaps even by mistake - one doesn't always consistently process all shots, right? Also, the tulips are different, which also may cause you to like one over the other. Personally, I prefer the pink one, but it's art, & we all have our preferences.

Just like my preference is the following: I can't stand to see this, which is the tulip scene exposed for your beloved midtones, or the subject matter that is the main subject.

Actually, even there, the reds of the tulips are still only L=30, w/ the sunlit portions at L=50, which is a proper midtone, so it's still conventionally underexposed. Note how amateurish it looks w/ the sky blown.

In fact, any exposure greater than the one I published in the review ended up having a large area under the sun blown, w/ an ugly, harsh transition that makes the shot look amateurish.

I'll take noisier shadows over that amateurish, nuclear-bomb-went-off-in-the-sky, any day. Better yet, I'll take a camera that doesn't give me that extra noise at all.

Even if you prefer the Canon shot, that same Canon w/ more DR would've given me the same shot, but w/ cleaner shadows.

In fact, base ISO shots pushed 5 EV look more like ISO 2000 shadows on the D810, if you've exposed optimally, since it goes down to ISO 64. That's powerful, as ISO 2000-like noise levels may be perfectly acceptable in print, & even then we're only talking about those noise levels in single exposures of some of the highest DR scenes you can photograph. For more reasonable scenes, noise levels will be better, & you'll always still maintain that noise advantage: even a more modest 2-3 EV push will have less noise on a D810 than on a 5DS R, so if you're so obsessed over noise, it's ironic you don't care about DR (unless you never push shadows, in which case fine, but trying to convince someone who shoots high contrast scenes that DR doesn't matter is just disingenuous). So that 2-3 EV push you were curious about? It may be more acceptable, but it'll still have more noise than that from a higher DR camera. And for this tulip scene, you'd still have an ugly, harsh transition to blown, skies.

Oh, and as for compressing shadows and highlights, & increasing contrast in the midtone region, that's exactly what I did w/ the tulips, by starting with pulling back highlights & pushing blacks in ACR, then applying midtone contrast via luminosity masks in Photoshop. Perhaps I could go further, & I may give that a shot reprocessing these shots, but it's really hard to b/c of the saturated colors - any manipulation of contrast ends up making tones run into one another, which leads to clipped tonal transitions.

You're nitpicking a shot that is probably literally the hardest shot I've ever taken with respect to high dynamic range and processing difficulties.

Your telling us to enjoy our muddy world is just silly an disingenuous - are the shots in my Sigma 24-35mm gallery a muddied world? No. Do we always push shadows 5 stops? No. But when we have to b/c the scene demands it, we can. And when we only need to push 2-3 EV, we still get noise-free results.

Gonna try to get out of this quick because I've spent way to many hours on this. Thanks for at least partially addessing some of the questions I've posed in this post. From the beginning my point is not that additional DR is bad, but that its importance has been advanced by DxO and now by DPReview (2 DR articles on this camera) beyond reason. This is a philosophical issue that requires a certain amount of technical discussion, but most of the responses have followed the "you just don't get it" or even better the "have you ever heard of photoshop" route. On more than one occasion I've praised the abilities of the Sony sensor, and I'd be an idiot if I didn't recognize the value of more dynamic range. But that really wasn't ever what I was talking about here. I was talking first about its relative importance, and secondly, how you chose to illustrate it. The fact that you keep referring back to the Nikon is both telling and completely beside the point.

I've stipulated so many times to its superiority that I sound like a fanboy for the yellow and black.

My problem is/was with how you chose to illustrate CANON's DR by utilizing an exposure that for the 5dsr was significantly underexposed (you are essentially showing us the noise floor in an area that should render 1-2 stops brighter). Had the article been a side by side comparison of the two cameras (both with the same color tulips), and labeled as such...we would only be debating half of the story.

As to the sample you're now showing that you call amateurish, well we don't know a lot about that one...other than that it was shot at a very different f-stop. We don't know if you attempted to pull the highlights down here or if this is simply an unadjusted capture (that's my guess). If you go back and read my posts...you'll see that I was never recommending an initial exposure this bright. If this is an unadjusted capture, it's probably 4-5 stops brighter than the original capture.

I suggested about 2 stops brighter. To me its about nuance. In one exposure you've buried everything in the shadows, in the other you've blown the sky. I've only been arguing for a middle ground. (still obsessed with the middle, me).

On your treatment of the two images. I think you missed my point. My point was that the canon exposure was, for a shot of this range, pretty nice (because you processed it the way you did--I actually said that in my post...)...my point about the Sony capture is again more nuanced...more dynamic range doesn't preclude you from being able to process the image out so that it has a natural appearance, but that almost always means compressing a substantial amount of the dynamic range towards the margins even in a 12stop camera, which simply calls into "question" the need for the additional range. The sony shot as you showed it illustrates the problems I first noted with handling that DR, that's all. It's simply hard to make it all fit.

Now I know you think you "expanded" the mid-tones of the pink tulip photo, but because you've had to accomplish that within approximately 1/2 of the original output range (because your sky is artifically dark), it's really not possible. Refer to your the "amateurish" unadjusted red tulip shot...by exposing "normal", you've pushed the midtones to where they belong and the camera's gamma is placing those tones at approximately a 1:1 relationship to how they were captured. The gamma of the midtones in the pink tullip shot you processed is barely half of that. This is not "increased contrast in the midtone region". Not by any measure.

About the muddy world. Sorry...that's not like me. It was directed at Jon because of the "miles ahead" comment. And if you noticed I poked similar fun at myself (sunglasses..burning some highlights...ha...ha?)

One minor point about the "amateurish one". Of course you know that If I was hired by the seed company to shoot their tulips, they'd probably want them to look like this...sky or not, right? I of course agree that the sky is blown here, but we all know that there's a middle ground where everybody, you, me and the seed company could be satisfied.

Rishi -- I've never questioned your abilities as a photographer. That you could get this much out of what is usually just a "flare-bomb" is fantastic. And I'm sure that the vast majority of your exposures on the Sigma Gallery (which I haven't seen) and other things you done here are just fine. The only one I have a problem with is the one linked to in this article. I'm really surprised given all the other perfectly exposed images you've presented that you've spent so much time defending this one. But I'm glad you did. Nice meeting you.

And one little aside...this is just a personal thing. While I was writing yesterday's screed, my girlfriend (who thinks DR means dinner) came in to the office. As I sat there bitching about you and Jon -- big :-) -- I showed her your rendering of the pink tulips next to my adjustment of it. I asked what she thought...she said it looked fake. I asked which one did she like best...she said mine...I said why? She said, "well if you're going to go fake, you might as well go all the way!"

Gary, I don't have a preferred brand. I have preferences for hardware capability. ;) I'd take a Canon with 14 stops of DR on a 5D style package in a heartbeat. I really don't care about the brand.

That said, I do have a problem with Canon these days, as they are not honest about the state of their technology, nor the capabilities of their current cameras. There have been a few interviews with Masya Maeda, including one or two here on DPR, where he was overtly "ignorant" of the possibility that Canon's sensor technology has become very dated. That's putting it kindly, I think...in one of the questions, he basically lied outright about Canon having the best sensor technology on the market.

As someone who has dutifully and loyally waited for Canon to deliver the kind of DR I need and want in a DSLR, after that, it was really hard to keep respecting Canon. It tainted my view of them, and I decided to stop being a one-brand loyalist. I still use Canon...just not exclusively.

In contrast to the Canon interviews with Maeda, a recent inerview with Sony;s Kimio Maki was refreshingly honest. The company KNOWS they are the underdog, knows they cannot be arrogant in their approach to products and the market place, knows they need to be responsive to customer needs, and understands what it means to be the challenger in an established space. I enjoyed Maki's candor and honesty, which was rather stark against the backdrop of Maeda's obfuscation and face saving for Canon.

I'll never stop using Canon cameras, but, as someone who cares about how his hardware limits him...or alternatively "frees" him from limitations, Canon has left me disappointed and looking for answers to my needs elsewhere.

The image Rishi shared in this article, the image you take so much issue with, is very indicative of the reality of Canon's sensor technology. Sure, Rishi could expose two stops brighter...however to do so would sacrifice something. Sacrifice & Canon...hmm, imagine that.

The only sacrifice I see Jon, is a lot of grain in the shadows. I went out last night with the 5dsr and shot a very similar scene. My scene had many deep shadows in addition to the sun, low in the sky. I ran a series of exposures from normal to 5 stops underexposed. My midtones and shadows looked like his in only the darkest two. I was able to hold detail in the sky similar to Rishi's with but a 1/2 stop push. Depending on your pleasure there were two additional exposures each a stop darker than the previous would have all produced better results than his exposure in the midtones and shadows, and were equal to his in the sky.

If you performed and experiment and produced some useful data, it would really help if you shared it. ;)

BTW, the sacrifice I was talking about would be clipped highlights. With digital photography, shadow details fade slowly into the noise floor, however highlights clip suddenly. If your close to the full well capacity of the sensor (as Rishi was), increasing exposure runs the very high risk of clipping the highlights.

That's the scrifice. Not just with Canon cameras...with any camera that has 10-11 stops of DR (such as older MFD cameras before Sony released their 50mp MF Exmor). You have to choose what to preserve. If you need the shadow detail, you clip the highlights. If you need the highlights, you bury the shadows in read noise. Three more stops of DR is like bracketing two frames at -1.5...+1.5 and doing an HDR blend. Same quality in the end, same shadow noise...without the potential HDR blend issues (ghosting, posterization, etc.)

As I said, my highlights are no more clipped than Rishi's, so there's no sacrifice there. Rishi's exposure in this article is protecting the highlights far beyond what is necessary to maintain what he's shown in his grade of the image.

To use Rishi's word, it's rather disingenuous of you to request my data after ignoring my requests for discussion and info regarding your earlier tests. Rishi has intermediate exposures of his tulips (his first article details the bracketing etc that he did). When I asked to discuss a slightly lighter exposure, he produced a blown out wide-open exposure instead. It makes you wonder why he would show us that image rather than producing the image that could have proved me wrong. My image would prove nothing to you because you could always claim the situations didn't match. I'm comfortable in my comments that Rishi's exposure distorts what this camera is capable of in this situation. If you want proof of that, you only need to ask him to produce it.

For what it's worth, I'll be purchasing the new Canon C300 Mark II when it's released precisely because it has even more dynamic range than it's predecessor (and most of the other similarly priced cameras on the market), so you see I do understand what a little extra range will do for you. While in video, additional DR is arguably more important (compressed files, temporal DR issues not applicable to stills, and more difficult grading). I have the same qualms regarding having all that extra range, and I've heard seasoned DP's express the same sentiment. Again, it's all a question of relative importance to me. I've proved for myself that the 5dsr can function well in a most extreme contrast situation, one that I can never imagine shooting in. Luckily for you there are other manufacturers that can meet your needs.

What requests of yours have I ignored? And, simple fact, I have provided data, rather than anecdotes and claims that I've done testing without backing those claims up with concrete evidence. So has Rishi.

If you have done testing, your claims about the results mean nothing unless you prove you actually did the testing by sharing the data, so that everyone can see for themselves what the photos actually look like, rather than simply having to take your word for it.

At least Rishi provided actual photos, whether they looked as you assumed they would or not.

I asked you to explain how your simple system of exposure, the one that you essentially said "that's all there is to it", works when given a scene with more dynamic range than the sony is capable of. (remember the humorous story of my cat "midnite"?) I asked a simple question that would illuminate the entire discussion. You ignored it.

Rishi has provided only the image that is in question, so it's hard to say how he's really provided data relative to "the question". And as I said, he certainly has the exposures to prove me wrong on this issue (or....um...to prove me right). One could say, he's a busy man, except that he had time to present another misleading image relative to the discussion at hand. So, no, relative to this discussion, neither of you have provided much insight. You've stuck to your guns. That's all. And frankly that's fine.

The only image that will truly settle this discussion is one of the red tulips taken at a moderately lighter exposure at the same time as the original. (processed for "best results" or in a manner designed to attempt to replicate the posted image, as it appears to have localized adjustments). My image entered into the discussion would only be "anecdotal", (just as, frankly, Rishi's is, sitting out there all on it's own).

But really, it doesn't matter. If you choose to believe the 5dsr isn't capable of better than what Rishi showed, then fine, wait for the next gen Canon, or jump ship. I've seen your portfolio. I don't see much in there that requires extraordinary DR.

"It makes you wonder why he would show us that image rather than producing the image that could have proved me wrong."

Here's the problem: no image would ever prove you wrong, b/c you'll always find something wrong with our side of the argument until you're willing to re-evaluate your position. I've had these arguments before: 'but if you'd just optimized your exposure +0.7 EV in this direction or -0.3 EV in that direction, it would've solved everything'.

And that's kind of the point: you can't perfectly optimize your exposure in the field. Your camera doesn't even give you a correct indicator of your Raw. A camera with high DR is forgiving of your exposure decisions.

I picked a latter exposure that exposed the midtones properly, since you started off talking about properly exposed midtones. Every shot in between had an ugly sky w/ posterized transitions to the blown skies, so they were all unacceptable, & showing you one of those would've made no difference whatsoever.

Rishi...I've already addressed your mid-tones. The highlights on the flowers, which you call mid-tones (?) are all placed in the bottom 10% of the histogram, and were barely visible in the original raw.

And....here you go again...making it about me...saying I just wouldn't believe it if you showed it to me. It's sad that a WRITER for DPreview resorts to the same type of arguments as the rabble, rather than either fessing up (and eating crow with the boss), or using your data (the bracketing you claimed to have made when you originally posted the image) to explain or prove your point. Fascinating.

Also, fascinating are your comments on inability to "optimize" exposure in the field. (wow...did you really write that?) It makes sense though, exposing the way you propose...that of course you can't You're relying on some viral exposure method that renders your histogram and monitor completely useless.

All you know is that your sun won't blow out, and in Jon's case, that the useless detail out his window will be perfectly rendered. That more dynamic range allows for "mistakes' has nothing to do with you displaying an underexposed, over-pushed image as indicative of this camera's abilities. In fact...it kind-of implies that, ummm...maybe that exposure was one of those mistakes that the A7R would have helped you out of. (and even if it wasn't...exposing the 5DSR like you would the A7R IS a mistake, as I mentioned at the head of this thread.)

How's this. Let's just end it here. No one else is listening, I'm sure.

Since my last post, I completed a project for a national brand wine producer, shooting natural light portraits of their viticulturalist in a vineyard while pointing my camera at the sun. This camera provided stellar results when exposed in the manner I suggested, and the client will no doubt be tickled with what I deliver. (Just for fun I went Rishi-Style on a few exposures, and dialed things down a couple of stops...results looked just like yours. I won't be passing those on to the client).

Yes, I really said you can't 'optimize' your exposure in the field, b/c you can't. You literally can't, b/c manufacturers only give you a histogram based on the JPEG conversion, & clipped highlights are only indicative of clipped highlights in the JPEG, which can often be far from what's clipped in the Raw.

There's no point in continuing this conversation, b/c you still don't get the underlying point, instead using red herrings like 'it's sad for a DPR writer to etc.'

I've already said that even the next 1/3 EV brighter exposure led to harsh, posterized transitions to clipped highlights in the sky, & I picked the exposure that, while having a clipped sun (fine by me), didn't have ugly posterized skies.

I could've picked a longer exposure that had those ugly posterized tones with less noise, or this one with a nice sky but noisy shadows. Either way, you're limited, which is what happens w/ low DR, as you yourself say you just experienced. In other words, our results don't vary.

Boy, that headline is sure a way to put a positive spin on the results!

Of course it matters to Canon shooters. They need a good bodies to go with their lenses. But we would expect this result - it SHOULD be the best Canon sensor yet, and it is.

But inserting the term "highest-ranked" for a sensor that's number 22 on the charts is a bit sneaky, don't you think?

If you simply removed the word "Canon" from the headline it would be a flat-out lie. Most people here recognize the leading words "EOS 5DS/R" as being from Canon, so the only purpose of adding the word "Canon" toward the end is to enable this sneaky headline.

For decades, statisticians manipulated data (without altering it) to skew or shift public opinion one way or the other.I don't imply that it is the case in DXO's data, but I don't know how these tests were made. I couldn't see a description on DXO's site, and, therefore, such data is not very useful to me. It's "OK", and I take it with a large grain of salt.We don't know the role that the different lenses played in the results, for example.I think they owe the readers and the manufacturers a complete description of the test procedure, and, especially, the photographic equipment used.

One big advantage of this test is that it keeps the pressure on Canon so they can "keep up with the Joneses", or even do better.

Looking at the 5DS/R, 6D, 5D-III, I do not see any justification to pay nearly $4,000 for a camera that may not give me much more than a $1,300 one (6D).

I wonder if the DR tables would be turned if Canon was using a 16-bit ADC in the 5DS/R cameras.

If you actually pick up a 5Ds, a D810, and let's say an A7r II (when they are available), and do some side-by-side landscape photography with all three. You will see why the 5Ds mesures lower on DXO.

Personally, I LOATH DXO's "scores"...I think trying to reduce a camera to a single, scalar number is a travesty, and I think it goes to DXO's detriment that they even try.

That aside, DXO's actual measurements are done well and can be quite valuable. Personally, I prefer not to refer to Print DR, as those numbers are only mathematically extrapolated, they are not actual measurements. The Screen DR numbers, however, are direct measurements from the RAW data.

Anyway, all you have to do is use the cameras in question, side by side, same subject (say a mountain landscape) in the same light, and you won't have to wonder anymore whether DXO is using their statistics to sway opinion.

@Jon Rista what most Canon fanboys seem to disregard is that Canon sensor technology is old entirely because of Canon complacency and reluctance to invest in sensor design and fabrication, and the results are in plain sight. Sony and Samsung, not surprisingly, semi-conductors behemoths, are taking the lead. Canon is in a different position. Is it a camera company? Or a semi-conductors company? In the past such worries didn't exist. The "sensors" were Agfa, Kodak, Fuji, Ilford.... At some point they will have to realize that either then invest in CMOS sensor fabrication to the tune of billions of USd every couple of years, or they become irrelevant. Or they go fabless.

16-bit ADC wouldn't help, as the problem is in the downstream noise introduced before the signal is digitized, due to the signal being piped off the image sensor to a separate chip to be digitized (and interference introducing noise along the way).

In fact, Canon could probably have gotten away with 12-bit ADCs, since there's no more than 12 EV dynamic range at the pixel-level (it's closer to 11 EV, in fact).

Rishi is correct here. A 16-bit ADC would just result in more bits of the output data being noise. You only gain value in using a higher bit depth if you have low enough noise to support it. With well capacities in modern FF sensors around 60-70ke- and read noise around 3-5e-, we can just about take full advantage of a 14-bit ADC. We would either need much larger full well capacities, or much lower read noise, in order to be able to fully take advantage of 16-bit ADC units. I agree that Canon currently does not benefit from 14-bit ADC...they barely have more than 11 stops of DR, so they could probably even save a little more space and use an 11-bit ADC. :P

Autochrome: I agree, Canon has not invested much in their sensor fabs. Personally, I find that curious. Canon builds fabs, it's one of their business segments. You would think, between selling fabs as a business, and being a digital imaging and photography company, that keeping their sensor technology up to date would be of prime importance.

Their reluctance to truly innovate in the sensor sector, and compete head on with Sony and Samsung (because they are probably the only camera company capable of doing so) has had me baffled for some time. Even worse, in an interview DPR did with Maeda last year, they effectively denied that their sensors needed to become more competitive at all.

That was even more confusing. Canon was either just saving face...or they simply do not understand how far ahead of them the competition is. Either way, it comes off arrogant, and they certainly aren't moving forward on the sensor IQ front. Sad, about all I can say about it.

Ironically, if we're talking about the 5DS, which we are I'm assuming, as this article's about the 5DS, the D810 actually does 6fps in 1.2x crop mode, which isn't a large sacrifice in FOV, & still gets you 25MP images.

Furthermore, the D810 does 7fps in 1.2x crop mode + battery grip, so it's capable of a full 40% faster frame rate than the 5DS.

Interesting to see part of the "Full SNR" measurements here, should have done that much much earlier already. It gives a much better view on what is actually going on, because the single DR number (per ISO) is totally misleading. There are a good few cameras which may have less DR than others, but provide more "flesh" for tonalities which actually matter. Once you start processing images you will see that difference. (For a quick test: D810 <-> A7s. Powa of the fat pixels, yo!)

As for the Metamerism Index: There are often differences between daylight and tungsten, but I've never seen that big of a difference as with the 5Ds. I really wonder where that comes from and if that shows in images / processing. Also, in terms of Canon, have a look at the scores for the Canon 1D3s (86 for daylight), which seems to be renowned for its color reproduction. Some 1-digit Nikons pull similar numbers. Interestingly, the 1Dx is not as good.

And one thing for that "Canon missed a chance here to catch up": Sony is the 800 pound gorilla in the sensor market (Samsung(!) being the other one), so they have *much* more resources at their hands. According to some "analysts/experts", Sony has an advantage of a few years over their competition, not to talk about that Canon is using some rather oldschool production process which limits them to progress further in some regards.

Canon put some brain into these two cameras, and exactly that will show in the daily use. Afterall, the sensor is just one piece of a big puzzle.

Actually, no. The D810 will show higher SNR per tone at ISO 64 compared to the a7S per tone at ISO 100, b/c of the increased FWC at ISO 64. For normalized, not pixel-level, comparisons. That is, per unit area of the final image, which is what matters, not pixel-level SNR, which is just for pixel-peeping on-screen.

At the same ISOs, say ISO 2000, the differences will be modest, but the a7S will probably pull ahead slightly due to the slight reduction in read noise, and perhaps a small increase in sensor efficiency for the a7S. Save for at the lowest ISOs, where the D810's lower read noise helps it pull ahead (probably b/c of lower quantization error due to the smaller pixels, ironically).

It's not really the big pixels that matter - it's total sensor size that matters, since valid comparisons are typically normalized for common output size, which minimizes the direct effects of those 'large pixels'.

Most of the downscaling theories kind of assume that you scale down before you apply any processing. However, in reality picture processing always happens at the full resolution, means with the quality of the single pixels. Downscaling happens *after* that. The impact of that becomes more obvious the higher the ISOs go. (Why is there no 6400+2, +3, +4 and stuff like that? That should uncover ISO (non-)capabilities rather easy compared to some "uh-huh, noise"-statements which everyone interprets differently.)

Plus, (haven't cross-checked right now) the A7s has like 6db more advantage in the higher tones, which translates, if I'm not mistaken, to 2 stops aka you'd need 4 times the MPix count to cover that up. As said, in theory, because post-processing is not a linear transformation.

However, here comes the bummer: In a blind test you'd fail to distinguish that, same as with not too large sensor size differences. You will perceive the differences during post-processing, though.

If these DR numbers are your main concern and you've got a few billion $ lying around unused, feel free to offer Canon a strategic investment :) But don't expect things paying off after a year or so.

Read: Canon is a company out to make money and they will try to offer you their best within the given profit constraints. For example, you cannot just switch from a 0.5µm to a 0.18µm process overnight (if we assume the production facilities are available), let alone 65nm, and what else there is used to make sensors.

they've been greedy with their profits, that's why they've stuck with their 0.5µm for so long. I hope it's going to bite them more later on as other companies move to even better designs / sizes, because when the pace is fast and accelerates (we got not only sony this time pressuring canon, but samsung and panasonic too) the slows will be left behind.

They're making so many poor choices with their camera line-up atm, DR is not the only one. They're protecting 5d4, 1dx2 / 1dc by leaving 4k out of this camera. They're protecting 5d4 (and in a sense 5d3 too) by leaving headphone output out from this camera. They still don't have even 1080p 60fps do they?

It's really sad, because this could be really good camera, but the company doesn't want to commit to this model hard enough. Instead, it was this to be "secondary camera" whilst the 5d4 will be main camera. This will be "pretty much 5d3 but with more mp" , whilst 5d4 will be something newer and "better".

@Lassoni: I'd never get the 5Ds for video. Even Sony has problems getting their sensors read out fast enough, and usually you need additional circuitry just for the video stuff (i.e. binning & co), which eats valuable space from the actual photo-site ("fill factor"). Aside of that, Canon added a new mirror-movement/shutter mechanisms to the 5Ds and renewed the 5D3 with stuff they developed in the meantime and used in the 7D2, for example. Compared to the initial price of the 5D3 and the expected amount of sales I think the price is validated (plus keep in mind that the overall DSLR sales are dropping, which means prices will go up).

If you don't need the resolution, then for sure wait for the 5D4. Canon is working hard on that one :-)

@autochrome: Yes, sure, it will certainly be an investment into the future, so it should be something you don't need to upgrade from within a year. However, smaller structure sizes also bring new problems, so that choice is not as easy as you may think.

You might not use 5Ds for video, but I'm sure there's plenty of ppl who "would" adore if the camera had better video features.

I know I would love if my D810 did 4k

"Compared to the initial price of the 5D3 and the expected amount of sales I think the price is validated".. you know 5D3 was overpriced, right? D800 was cheaper and D800E was same price. 800 euro difference between 5D3 and D800 was pretty big imo.

Still, the 5D3 sold like hotcakes, so the price was right. The price didn't go down that fast either, which indicates that the camera was selling rather well. Personally, I've seen way more 5D3 than D800/E in the "wild", and from an allrounder requirements list the 5D3 is the better camera.

As for 4k stuff: 4k will take a few years to reach the place where FullHD is currently (in many ways). If you want to be an early bird, go ahead, but don't complain to me about the labor pains, because I don't care :P You will have my thanks for sticking out your head, though :D

It should give Canon even an advantage. Pictures have more high frequency information and you could even use NR in post if required to even the playing field. You need to decide for one approach. They chose downsampling.

I think that the key take-away point here is that a sensor with more usable dynamic range is going to be able to yield a post-processed image from a single exposure that would otherwise have required HDR composition of exposures from a sensor with a smaller usable dynamic range.

I can't remember the last time that I've resorted to HDR composition from multiple exposures, apart from HDR exercises from my Arcanum master.

@ObelixCMM The Arcanum is the best thing I've been able to do to bring my photography to the next level. Where else can you get a professional photographer whose work you respect to direct your progress and give *useful* critiques of your work? It's been an awesome experience and I'm lucky to be involved.

@kenwnyc: With a Nikon D810, I haven't had to use multiple exposures. However, for really high DR scenes, to maximize the DR captured you have to optimize your exposure so that your brightest tones are just short of clipping. And the reality is no manufacturer really helps you do that, since metering modes aren't designed around shooting this way, and you only get a histogram/clipping indicator related to the JPEG, not the Raw. Good thing, though, is that with Nikon's 'flat' picture profile, the histogram is at least close to indicative of what's in your Raw. So if you squeeze your brightest tones to just short of clipping your 'Flat' JPEG, you're close to optimally exposing your Raw.

Memo to Canon 5Ds / 5DsR users (other than DPR staff): if there is anyone out there that has one of these cameras, please express your informed point of view. So, what you were able to do and you were satisfied and in which situations your photographic skills were handicaped by the camera?All other pows are valid, but just bla bla - because real life experience correlation (e.g.: I used this during a wedding... / a landscape photo session... / etc) with test findings (DPR) is absent. IMHO you cannot judge a camera from a single perspective. Brian (TDP) and the French (Cd'I / RP) are offering good perspectives, but I feel this is not enough as well.P. S.: I tend to take any opinion here with a grain of salt, due to ferocious "brand vs brand" battles I see. I don't know who's who, who earns money from any camera maker and who's not. So, if you can offer some unbiased real life experience please do it - I am pretty curious now about the DSLR world...

Can someone objectively tell me why Canon sell so many cameras? Who are they selling to, and who is their target market? What would trigger a need to change in the minds of the Canon executives?

In spite of out dated sensor technology, Canon sell a lot of cameras. The ROI on R&D spending must be high. Until their revenues decline, or shareholders start picketing over low DR, I don't see a fundamental change happening.

Canon has been a well known camerabrand for nearly 80 years and have been very popular by many professionals for decades.

Canon also had a very large role in digitizing photography and were on the forefront when the market changed from analogue to digital. They leaded the market from 2000 to 2009 in both innovative cameras and sensor design.

They were the first in 2000 to make affordable (3 megapixel - D30) DSLRs for the mainstream. They also introduced the first professional DSLR in 2001 (4MP /8 fps APS-H sized Canon 1D).

Then in 2005 they introduced the first affordable FF 5D with a 12 MP sensor and the (back then) whopping 17MP pro 1Ds MKII.

4 Years later in 2008 Canon changed the video industry with the introduction of the 5D MKII that had a resolution of 22MP and could do 1080P at 30fps).

Up until then Canon was an innovative company just like Sony is today that dominated the market. At that moment Canon cutted back their R&D efforts and Sony took their chance to take over.

They are still innovating, just not in the sensors that are put into their cameras. This likely is due to the fact that they are only behind in one aspect (low-iso DR). And, this one aspect is not THE MOST IMPORTANT aspect in a camera. I will add that what they provide in this one aspect (~11-12 EV) is adequate for 99+% of use cases. If it was so necessary to have 13-15 EV for a large number of use cases, Canon would provide it. It would cost a lot (new fabrication plants etc.), but they would have to do it. Absorbing this fact should end all discussion of low-iso DR ;}

I think Canon has more to offer than any other single manufacturer in both these areas. They're still the dominant sports photography camera. And they offer a greater number of specialty lenses, while maintaining good lens quality at the high end.

For the "contemplative" photographer - or one on a tighter budget - other brands may have more appeal. And if he's a perfectionist, there are good arguments for camera systems priced both above and below Canon.

This thread really cracks me up... It's like the Spanish inquisition, and Canon is the witch. Do you guys all forget that in the not so distant past, we had negative and positive film (color print film and color slide film) the negative film had a much greater exposure latitude (DR) than positive film... Yet... virtually every pro and all of us (sans wedding photographers) overwhelmingly used the much less DR slide film (Velvia Kadachrome etc) Haha and we all got epic shots (National Goeographic) Now we have a sensor capable of greatly out resolving Velvia, with nearly triple the DR, and it's considered DOA?

I would just like to say, that I spend much more time in Lightroom camouflaging unwanted background shadow detail, than I do trying to reveal it. Most great photographs have a main subject, and try to minimalize background artifacts. Seldom do we want to reveal the texture in the mud, underneath the shadowed rock, and also show the spots on the lunar sun.

Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope......THANKS, THE SILVER NEMESIS I haven't laughed so loud in a while !

The real news: Essentially every shot with a 5dsr + 24-70 f2.8 II when performed properly will be sharper and have more detail than d810 + nikon 24-70. DXO doesn't rate systems in their overall scores. Even with 5dsr, NR on high iso noise, detail and sharpness is preserved. The 2 DR obsession is a very narrow window of shots. Folks obsess over sharpness and detail -- where are they in this thread? Rarely are shots pushed 4+, yet shooters want to see blazing sharpness in their shots -- which the Canon glass and these new bodies give. Side by side real photos in real places will tell "the real story".

The results shown on many websites so far haven't been that impressing at all. In theory you are right and there should be more detail to be seen on 5DS images, but the real life performance seems really mediocre.

Next to that it is not about pushing 4 stops of detail. A wider DR is already seen by a proper exposed image as there is not only more detail to be seen in the shadows but also there is by default more details in the highlights as well. So on both sides the Canon sensor fall short against the Sony sensors used in many other cameras.

@Boissez: Yeah would like to see primes with 4 stop IS - the 35 f2 IS and the 100 L. But no doubt Canon 24-70 f2.8 II will beat Nikon equivalent lens on their respective highest MPxl cameras. But I'd be wanting to use a tripod or 4 stop IS on the canon

Above iso 400 there is practically no difference in DR. If you want to exploit all DR capability of Nikon D810, you have to stick with iso64-100 or 200 maximum. Thus your shooting envelope will be pretty limited and the DR advantage highly situational for the highest DR images. To exploit highest DR will be a precision work with both Nikon and Canon.

To preserve highlights by underexposing on purpose gives you a lot more flexibility and makes full use of of the sensor capabilities. A lot of my shots are done below ISO 800, so it is of lots use for me.

Exactly what HFLM said. In fact, when shooting high contrast scenes or during shoots where there may be high contrast moments, I'll often shoot Raw and cap my Auto ISO at 1600 or 800, doing any further image brightening in post. No use throwing away all that highlight data when pushing in post comes at barely any noise cost compared to increasing the ISO in camera. Meanwhile, I give myself stops and stops more highlight headroom under situations traditionally demanding higher ISOs.

Looks like good cameras; only regret I have with spending £1K+ in 2015 is that in the Video department they should have match with competition (Sony) and put in 4K video.. Same applies to the D810 and D7200 - although the static image quality from these cameras are excellent these days.

The second chart needs to be more widely disseminated. If I had a dollar for every time I've seen someone put a daylight grey card (in DPR's test scene) of some camera to show how "close" the SNR of crop cameras have gotten to FF cameras...

for the last couple of years I have found that I shoot more and more at higher iso's...1600iso for a commercial job on my 6d is not uncommon...the reason why is that I have migrated to smaller battery powered flashes, all in the name of portability and to be not reliable on electrical power for my lighting. Thus its a relieve to see that at the higher iso's the Canon is able to almost match the better Sony sensors...these days most of my assignments are done between 400-1600iso...with 800iso my go to iso... unless I am in the studio, and well then the DR is not nearly as important because I can control the light more...but if this new Eos 5Ds can exceed the overall image quality of the 6D it will be just grand.

and as long as the Canon can not keep up with the DR parameter DR is unimportant in an image context.The myth that Canon is "always" best in all situations is deeply rootedand at CR and several pro Canon pages disparaged now the measuring methods at DXO and dpreview

MLammers , there is a great divide between the expectations of hobbyist and professionals....any competent photographer can bend any camera to do his will, and you are going to have to look hard to find a camera that is not good enough....agreed no client has ever complained about any part of the image quality, ever....we live in great times!

80 and Gold Award or 84 and no award. And don't forget the old favorites "a bit bulky compared to an iPhone", "Live View AF not faster than a speeding bullet" and "no Auto ISO and EV compensation in Manual Mode".

Another thought - how much effect does using state-of-the-art NR software have on this? Running the images through DXO PRIME or Neat Image and then comparing would be interesting.

It does seem one of the big changes in camera performance in recent years hasn't been ever-better sensors but ever more powerful processors in cameras (and cleverer Raw processing software) knocking the noise on the head at ever less levels of detail destruction (although the in-camera approach does still seem to have a long way to go on the latter). BTW running old 20D images taken with the not-very-nice 17-85 lens through DXO 10, NI 7.2 or LR 6 can make some significant improvements.

A real pain for review sites to test, but relevant I think. I assume users doing big shadow lifts will also consider many other processing options. (BTW sites comparing JPEGs at default settings, being the non-high-workload approach, does perhaps have an interesting reverse effect on how camera makers choose those settings.)

The reason we don't think NR is relevant in comparisons is b/c whatever NR you can apply to one camera, you can apply to the other. Pretty specious when certain writers/reviewers apply NR to the 5DS, or 7D Mark II as it were, and then say 'this brings it much closer in performance to the D810' (or D7000), when that completely ignores the fact that you could also apply that NR to the D810 (or D7000) and have it continue to keep its lead.

So while NR may be entirely relevant for the end photograph (I personally rarely use it, as it tends to hurt prints significantly IMHO), it's not relevant in comparisons b/c whatever camera has a lead, will keep its lead.

Rishi, I don't completely agree with you there... What good NR gives one is the ability to 'extend' the rather 'poor in comparison' DR of the Canons, if needed and that's also probably why so many Canon shooters are quite happy with their 'limited' DR cameras...because in practice what they have and can do in post is 'good enough' The one big lesson I learned way back at photo school, and something that A Adams talked about a lot was the 'correct visual' values in a print...just because one can recover all of the shadow detail does not necessarily make for a better image.....go look at Alex Webb's images, very contrast and 'dark' with hardly any shadow detail...and intentionally so...This is not to say at all that more DR is not desirable but really what cameras can do now is totally amazing for us from the days of film......I actually use Viveza and Tri-X filters a lot to boost the contrast and blacks in my images.... ...and also to set me a part from the HDR brigade

@Rishi: The idea is that noise reduction removes noise from a signal. If the Sony sensor already have close to 14 EV using a 14 bit ADC there is almost no noisy signal to recover - it would be inventing a fantasy signal!5Ds has more noise and therfore NR should work better removing that noise.Hence, the question by Dr_Jon is very relevant, right?

I was saying there is a point you want to get to with a photo. For maybe 99% of (Brand X, Camera Y) photos the DR will be fine, for the remainder if some noise reduction gives you the image you wanted then it's all good. If mathematically Brand A Camera Z gives an even lower noise level you don't care if you've got to where you wanted and you can't actually see the difference anyway.

I have thought for some time doing noise comparisons between cameras is getting really tricky, as in real life it's more a case of what level of detail reduction annoys you (which in-camera processing can still do, I get annoyed by m43 NR artifacts at ISO 200 from time-to-time for example). Measuring that is tricky, as human perception comes into play a lot. As does what was affected (eyelash bad, twig on tree in background probably irrelevant).

I did some work for someone's blog recently where I rescued an image using Neat Image, even I was surprised how well it came out in about 60 seconds of work.

The one thing with reviews like DPR is that you guys evaluate the 'raw' unprocessed files with each other..and although I can perfectly understand why and where you are coming from, imo and in real life it actually is totally pointless because I ALWAYS apply NR, even if its just the default NR in software like DPP and LR etc...so for me there is absolutely no value in looking at an image with NO NR, because in real life I don't either... by way of an example its like comparing cars before the exaust, silencer, tyres, body, service plan, dealer experience, availability, prices etc etc is 'added' on and then declaring one engine better , faster, more powerful, frugal etc over another...But as I said from a reviewers (practical) point of view I can understand it but from my point of view its really pointless...like DXO's reviews, for example, their maximum iso bears no relation to the iso most photographers actually use in real life which is much higher because of NR for instance...

Just for clarification, in our samples galleries, we do leave default chroma NR on, and ACR does provide a minimal basal level of luminance NR to all cameras, AFAIK. We don't turn either of these off, so our sharpness/noise results aren't as far-from-real-world as your comment suggests, in my opinion. :)

I have used the 5dsr for a couple of weeks and the combination between the sensor and the latest Canon lenses is simply breathtaking, not only in terms of resolution. Images are almost three-dimensional, resembling the effect of an old Kodachrome. I suggest not focusing only on specific aspects (i.e. DR, noise, ...), all things that can be easily adapted in Photoshop, but on the final result.

Apparently the same photo of the tulips has been shot with the 5DS and with the 7S. I also made the same consideration.

Agree ... and I have Nikon gear ... 750 right now. There is some validity to pointing this out (endlessly) I guess, but if I was a Canon shooter I wouldn't jump ship for 2 ev in shadow recovery at base iso. These issues really don't affect our photographic abilities much. Just a touch of NR in the Canon "Tulip" shot and it's good to go IMO, and has the same visceral photographic appeal (kudus Rishi) even without that. Plenty of photographers (who can easily grasp the technical significance) will ignore it or compensate where necessary, and do splendid work with these new bodies ...

Thanks. Just one point of clarification though: that Canon tulip shot has already been downsized to 36MP, so it's effectively has some level of 'NR' already applied to it (from resampling), yet requires even more to get less noisy results at the pixel level. Ultimately this means that for higher contrast scenes, you're not going to get the benefit of all those extra pixels unless you bracket, use filters, etc. That may be an important point of consideration to someone who shoots high contrast scenes, landscapes, etc., as a Sony a7R II won't have any of these issues, while providing 42MP of resolution, with Canon glass for that matter.

not sure why one wont get the 'benefit of the extra pixels' in high contrast situations...it just means the image will look less HDR like than compared with a sony sensor image...but the benefit of the extra pixels, which is extra resolution, will still be there....

@DPreview, since a few commentators seem to misunderstand down sampling, how it relates to signal-to-noise, and also because down sampling of images is now extremely common, perhaps it would be worth writing a feature on it - just like you did on the "sources of noise", or the "equivalent aperture". Down sampling for maximum information retention is a fairly straightforward topic, but just like lossy image compression, down sampling for maximum perceived quality, with minimal artefacts, is fairly complex, with a lot of literature, and a handful of algorithms to choose from.

As an aside, comparing at the lower of the two native resolutions is much fairer than at native pixel level, but because no down sampling algorithm is perfect, it slightly favours the image at native resolution. Unless there is a reason to pick 36MP as a target, down sampling both images to a third resolution could minimise the difference.

If you're going to compare at different ISO by saying that's the Base you should also compare both at the same ISO (i.e. 100) I think. On the flip side it looks like the D810 absolutely destroys many state-of-the-art Cine cameras in base ISO comparisons (theirs commonly being 800).(I'm not saying the result will be that different at 100, but I think doing that as the main comparison and 64 vs. 100 as an additional one would have seemed better to me.)

For one, you can compare the cameras at whatever ISO you want - the full graph is there for you. :)

But I actually disagree with your logic of comparing the cameras at ISO 100 for the following reason: if you're concerned about dynamic range from a landscape perspective, you can give the camera as much exposure as it needs (you're on a tripod). Therefore, you can give the D810 2/3 EV more exposure before the same highlights clip at ISO 100 on the 5DS. Therefore, since you can do that in the field, that's what's relevant.

In other words, ideally you ETTR (maximum exposure you can give before tones you care about clip to white), and you ETTR a D810 at ISO 64, and you ETTR a 5DS at ISO 100. You don't ETTR a D810 at ISO 100 when you're not light-limited (meaning, when you can give the camera as much as light as you want to), since that'd essentially mean you're giving yourself 2/3 EV or so extra highlight headroom relative to the 5DS.

Does this make sense? For low-light situations, where you can't arbitrarily give the camera more light (b/c you've already maxed out your shutter speed and/or aperture based on what's hand-holdable and your lens, respectively), it makes more sense to compare cameras given the exact same exposure. But for landscapes, you compare the best each camera can do, else you'd be unfairly crippling the, in this case, D810... for no real practical reason whatsoever.

It occurred to me, but you could also argue there are situations where you want ISO 100 shutter speeds rather than 64 (not all high DR is for Landscapes). For Landscape shooting the comparison that you've done is the best option, I was just saying I'd have done 100 vs. 100 as standard and 64 vs 100 as an add-on (and I was specifically thinking of Landscapes for that).

I see your point, sure, but for non-light-limited situations, you give the camera as much light as you can. So it's base ISO SNR/DR that matters.

For light-limited situations, yes, one should compare same ISO to same ISO, since you're usually limited in how much light you can give the camera, so ISO 64 vs ISO 100 doesn't matter... you'll be shooting at ISO 800 and above anyway.

And that that point, for same ISO comparisons, you can use our studio scene, where we do exactly as you ask.

But sure, SNR plots at the same ISOs would be helpful to understand sensor performance in light-limited scenarios.

We'd eventually like to provide that, but for now, you can kind of get that data from DxO's Full SNR data, though it's very hard to compare across cameras given that Full SNR isn't available in their 'compare' tools.

Different tulips, different day, different camera, different settings, etc. Not directly comparable.

However, since the measured ISOs and sensitivities of the a7R and 5DS are unlikely to be very different, in theory you could compare the two Raws (if I were to make them available) as long as you look at tones with similar (unaltered) Raw values.

I suppose we could make those available, but perhaps this is better suited for a forum discussion?

Nope, not worried about it. Was just wondering if one of the cameras was having a major color issue. I was going to guess the cannon, not for any technical reason, but rather because the other photo was named "pinktulips" (and this file was not named "redtulips"). However, seeing as they are just different tulips, and you're able to take two photos of tulips that seem to stretch on forever at 11mm, yet don't overlap, I'd say you've got quite an abundance of tulips!

IF the 50MP Canon is a 2WD Ferrari, the 36MP is just a 4WD Porsche, do you really need 4WD (more DR) to be the fastest around ( i.e. have more resolution)?

Moreover Canon has exlusive "tires" (glass) that can't be used on a Porsche, and we know that the glass has a huge impact on the real output resolution.

For photographers that demand the maximum resolution on a 35mm reflex camera the new Canon is the way to go... if the available glass suits your needs and being the most complete system available it's hard to argue that Nikon has a better selection.

I have read the comments and I have had it up to here ( gestures hand to eyebrow level ) with people writing that despite inferior measurements of almost everything measurable in a sensor that it still takes "gorgeous" photographs.

The raison d'etre of this site is to minimise the subjective and maximise the objective and I now believe that DPR is making a much better job of doing this. In particular, the SMI measurement of colour reproduction accuracy will, I hope, silence those arrogant folk ( like Ken Rockwell ) who keep throwing out comments like "I don't like the Sony/Olympus/etc. colours". It is a biological fact that everyone sees different colours.

And, Rishi, if you can dream up a unit of measurement that will silence the "but the Raws are compressed" sheep then you will remain my friend for life.

I'm afraid accurate measurements of color rendition won't have an impact on the taste debate - mainly because they're about two different things. SMI or similar metrics tell me how many shades of color the camera can differentiate, how good my starting point for post processing in a properly calibrated toolchain is.The "I don't like that brands colors"-fraction otoh is preoccupied with the way how the camera does something for them that their own presets could (and should) do. Most likely better, as the custom solution doesn't have to encompass the same wide range as the camera defaults.

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